Clay swept the bones of dinner into the river with his tail. The stripped white shapes bounced away in the current.

Fires flickered around the edges of the great central cave. Echoing space yawned overhead, dripping with stalactites, like huge teeth. The cave dome was big enough for six full-grown dragons to fit across with their wings extended. The underground river flowed along one wall, muttering and gurgling as if it were plotting its own escape.

Clay glanced at the two small sleeping caves that opened onto the hall — currently empty — and wondered where the other dragonets had gone while he was cleaning up.

“AHA!” yelled a voice behind him. Clay threw his wings over his head.

“What’d I do?” he yelped. “I’m sorry! It was an accident! Or if it’s the extra cow, Dune said I could have it because Webs would be out late but I’m sorry and I can skip dinner tomorrow!”

A small snout poked his back between his wings. “Calm down, silly,” Sunny said. “I wasn’t aha-ing at you.”

“Oh.” Clay smoothed his crest and twisted around to look at her, the smallest and last-hatched of the dragonets. A pale lizard tail was disappearing into her mouth. She grinned at him.

“That was my fierce hunting cry,” she said. “Did you like it? Wasn’t it scary?”

“Well, it was certainly surprising,” he said. “Lizards again? What’s wrong with cows?”

“Blech. Too heavy,” she said. “You look all serious.”

“Just thinking.” He was glad Kestrel and Dune couldn’t read minds like NightWing dragons. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the idea of escape all through dinner.

Clay lifted one of his wings, and Sunny nestled in close to him. He could feel the warmth from her golden scales radiating along his side. Sunny was too small and the wrong color — tawny gold instead of sand pale like most SandWings — but she gave off heat like the rest of her tribe.

“Dune says we should go study for an hour before bed,” she said. “The others are in the study cave already.”

Dune, the maimed dragon who taught them survival skills, was a SandWing, and so was Sunny … more or less. There was something not quite right about the littlest dragonet. Not only were her scales too golden, but her eyes were gray-green instead of glittering black. Worst of all, her tail curled into an ordinary point like the tails of most dragon tribes, instead of ending with the poisonous barb that was a SandWing’s most dangerous weapon.

As Kestrel often said, Sunny was completely harmless … and what good was a harmless dragon? But her egg fit the instructions in the prophecy, so she was their “wings of sand,” whether the Talons of Peace liked it or not.

Of course, there were no “wings of rain” in the prophecy at all. The dragonets had all heard — many times over — about how Glory was a last-minute substitute for the broken SkyWing egg. Kestrel and Dune called her a mistake and growled at her a lot.

Nobody knew whether the prophecy could still happen with a RainWing instead of a SkyWing. But from what Clay knew of SkyWings, he was very glad they had Glory instead of another grumpy, fire-breathing Kestrel under the mountain.

Besides, if anyone was likely to mess up the prophecy, it was him, not Glory or Sunny.

“Come on,” Sunny said, flicking him with her tail. He followed her across the central cave.

Twisting stone tunnels led off in four directions: one to the battle area, one to the guardians’ cave, one to the study room, and one to the outside world. The last was blocked with a boulder too big for any of the dragonets to move.

Clay stopped and pushed against the rock with his shoulder as they went by. He often tried to open it when the big dragons weren’t around. Someday it would move when he did that. Maybe not a lot, but even a tiny shift would let him know he was finally getting close to full grown. He felt big. He was constantly bumping into things and accidentally knocking stuff over with his tail or his wings.

Not today, he thought ruefully when the boulder didn’t budge. Maybe tomorrow.

He followed Sunny down the tunnel to the study room. His enormous feet and thick claws thumped and scraped along the stone floor. Even though he’d lived under the mountain his whole life, it still hurt to walk on bare rock. He was constantly stubbing his talons, and they always ached by the end of the day.

Tsunami was strutting around the study cave barking orders. Sunny and Clay sat down by the entrance, folding their wings back. A breath of air drifted down from the hole in the roof, far overhead — the only window to the outside in any of the caves. At night, without the distant hint of sunlight, the room felt colder and more hollow. Clay stretched up and sniffed at the darkness that had fallen on the other side of the hole. He thought it smelled like stars.

A map of Pyrrhia hung on the wall between the torches. Tsunami and Starflight loved staring at the map, trying to figure out where their hidden cave was. Starflight was pretty sure they were somewhere under the Claws of the Clouds Mountains. SkyWings preferred to live high among the peaks, so anything could happen in the deep caves below without being noticed.

“All this history is so confusing,” Sunny murmured to Clay, swishing her tail back and forth. “Why don’t the three sides just sit down and talk out an end to the war?”

“That would be great,” Clay said. “Then we could stop studying it.”

Sunny giggled.

“Stop that,” Tsunami said bossily, stamping her feet at them. “No whispering! Pay attention. I’m assigning parts.”

“This is not proper studying,” Starflight pointed out. His black NightWing scales made him nearly invisible in the dark shadows between the torches. He swept a few scrolls between his talons and began to neatly sort them into stacked triangles. “Perhaps I should read to everyone instead.”

“Dear moons, anything but that,” Glory said from the ledge above him. “Maybe later, when we’re trying to fall asleep.” Her long, delicate snout, glowing emerald green with displeasure, rested on her front claws. Ripples of iridescent blue shimmered across her scales, and tonight her tail was a swirl of vibrant purples.

If it weren’t for Glory, Clay thought, none of them would know how many colors there were in the world. He wondered what it must be like in the rain forest, where there was a whole tribe of dragons that beautiful.

“Shush,” Tsunami scolded. “Now, obviously I’d be the best queen, but let’s make Sunny the queen, since she is a real SandWing.” She bustled over and pushed Sunny into the center of the cave.

“Well, sort of,” Glory muttered under her breath.

“Hsst.” Starflight flicked her with his tail. None of the dragonets ever talked about why Sunny didn’t look like a regular SandWing. Clay’s guess was that her egg had been taken from the sand too early. Maybe SandWing eggs needed the sun and desert sand to keep them warm until hatching, or else they’d come out half baked and funny looking — although personally he thought Sunny looked just fine.

Tsunami tapped her talons on the cave floor, studying her friends. “Clay, you want to play the scavenger?”

“That’s hardly fair,” Starflight pointed out. “He’s twice Sunny’s size. A real scavenger would be smaller than her, according to this scroll over here. It says that scavengers have no scales, no wings, and no tail, and they walk on two legs, which sounds very unstable to me. I bet they fall over all the time. They like treasure nearly as much as dragons do. The scrolls say scavengers attack lone dragons and steal —”

“OH MY GOSH, WE KNOW,” Glory snapped. “We were all here for the fascinating lectures about them. Don’t make me come down there and bite you, Starflight.”

“I’d like to meet a real scavenger!” Clay said. “I’d rip off its head! And eat it!” He pounded his front talons on the stone below him. “I bet it would taste better than the mouthfuls of feathers Kestrel keeps bringing us.”

“Poor, hungry Clay,” Sunny teased.

“When we’re free, we’ll go find a scavenger nest and eat all of them,” Tsunami promised, nudging Clay with one wing.

Sunny blinked at her. “When we’re free?”

Oops. Tsunami and Clay exchanged glances. Sunny was sweet and trusting and absolutely terrible at keeping secrets.

“I mean, after we fulfill the prophecy, of course,” Tsunami said. “Clay, be the scavenger. Here, this can be your claw.” She swung her long tail in an arc and smashed a stalagmite loose. Shards of rock flew across the cave, and the other dragonets ducked.

Clay hefted the sharp rock spear in his claws and grinned wickedly at Sunny.

“Don’t actually hurt me,” she said nervously.

“Of course he won’t,” Tsunami said. “We’re just acting it out. And the rest of us will be the princesses. I’ll be Burn, Glory can be Blister, and Starflight will be Blaze.”

“I had to be a princess last time, too,” Starflight observed. “I’m not sure I like this game.” He stretched his wings and the scattered silver scales underneath glittered like stars in the night sky.

“It’s not a game, it’s history,” Tsunami said. “And if we had any other friends, we could play it differently. But there are three sand dragon princesses, so you have to be one, so stop complaining.”

Starflight shrugged and settled back into the shadows, the way he always did when he couldn’t win a fight.

“All right, go ahead,” Tsunami said, hopping onto the ledge next to Glory.

“Um,” Sunny said. She eyed Clay warily. “Right. Here I go, la la la, Queen Oasis of the SandWings. I’m so very important and, uh — royal — and stuff.”

Tsunami sighed. Glory and Starflight hid their smiles.

“I’ve been queen for ages and ages,” Sunny went on. She strutted across the cave floor. “No one dares challenge me for my throne! I am the strongest SandWing queen who ever lived!”

“Don’t forget the treasure,” Tsunami hissed, pointing at a pile of loose rocks.

“Oh, right,” Sunny said. “It’s probably because of all my treasure! I have so much treasure because I’m such an important queen!” She swept the rocks toward her and gathered them between her talons.

“Did someone say treasure?” Clay bellowed, leaping out from behind a large rock formation. Sunny yelped with fright.

“No!” Tsunami called. “You’re not scared! You’re Queen Oasis, the big, bad queen of the sand dragons.”

“R-right,” Sunny said. “Rargh! What is this tiny scavenger doing in the Kingdom of Sand? I am not afraid of tiny scavengers! I shall go out there and eat him in one bite!”

Glory started giggling so hard she had to lie down and cover her face with her wings. Even Tsunami was making faces like she was trying not to laugh.

Clay swung his stalagmite in a circle. “Squeak squeak squeak!” he shouted. “And other annoying scavenger noises! I’m here to steal treasure away from a magnificent dragon!”

“Not from me, you won’t,” Sunny said, bristling. She stamped forward, spread her wings, and raised her tail threateningly. Without the poisonous barb other SandWings had, Sunny’s tail was not very menacing. But nobody pointed that out.

“Yaaaaaaah!” Clay shouted, lunging forward with his rock claw. Sunny darted out of the way, and they circled each other, feinting and jabbing. This was Clay’s favorite part. When Sunny forgot about trying to act queenly and focused on the battle, she was fun to fight. Her small size made it easy for her to dodge and slip under his defenses.

But in the end Queen Oasis had to lose — that was how the story went. Clay drove Sunny back against the wall of the cave and thrust the fake claw between her neck and her wing, pretending it went right through her heart.

“Aaaaaaaargh,” Sunny howled. “Impossible! A queen defeated by a lowly scavenger! The kingdom will fall apart! Oh, my treasure … my lovely treasure . . .” She collapsed to the ground and let her wings flop lifelessly on either side of her.

“Ha ha ha!” Clay said. “And squeak squeak! The treasure is mine!” He scooped up all the rocks and paraded away, lashing his tail proudly.

“Our turn,” Tsunami said, jumping off the ledge. She hurried over to Sunny, clasped her talons together, and let out a cry of anguish. “Oh, no! Our mother is dead, and the treasure is gone. But worst of all, none of us killed her — so who should be queen now?”

“I was about to challenge her,” Glory cried. She flapped her wings dramatically. “I would have fought her to the death for the throne. I should be queen!”

“No, I should be queen!” Tsunami insisted. “I am the eldest and biggest and would have challenged her first!”

They both turned to look at Starflight, hidden in the shadows. The black dragon looked as if he was trying to become even more invisible.

“Come on, Starflight,” Tsunami said. “Don’t be a lazy —” She caught herself just before saying “RainWing.” The teachers said things like that all the time: “If you don’t study, you’re no better than a RainWing”; “What’s the matter, someone replace your brains with a RainWing’s?”; “Still sleeping? Anyone would think you were a RainWing!” (That last one was mostly for Clay.)

But the dragonets all knew Glory hated it, no matter how much she pretended she didn’t care. It also seemed really unfair. Glory was the only RainWing any of them had ever met, and she studied and trained harder than anyone else.

“Er … dragon,” Tsunami finished awkwardly, with a quick glance at Glory. “Starflight, get out here.”

The NightWing shuffled forward and looked down at Sunny, who had her eyes scrunched shut. “Oh dear, oh dear,” he said. “Well, now I should be queen. As the youngest princess, I could have the longest reign. That would be good for the SandWings. Also . . .” He paused and gave a long-suffering sigh. “Also, I am by far the prettiest.”

Sunny giggled, and Tsunami poked her to keep still. Clay swept his treasure rocks into a pile and sat on them.

“I should kill you both right now,” Glory snarled.

“You and what army?” Tsunami taunted her.

Glory stretched her neck up and bared her teeth. “That’s a great idea. I’ll go get an army — an army of SeaWings — and then you’ll be sorry.”

“You’re not the only one who can make alliances,” Tsunami said. “I’ll get the SkyWings on my side. And the MudWings! Then we’ll see who wins this war!”

There was a pause. They both looked at Starflight again.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “You do that, and I’ll ally myself with the IceWing army. Also, by the way, most of the SandWings want me to be their queen.”

“They do?” Sunny said, opening her eyes. “Who says?”

“Stop talking,” Tsunami said, poking her with one talon. “You’re dead.”

“There are lots of recent scrolls about it,” Starflight explained pompously. “Blaze is very popular with her own tribe.”

“So why can’t she be queen?” Sunny asked. “If that’s who they want?”

“Because Burn is bigger and scarier and could crush her like a bug if they actually fought claw to claw,” Glory chimed in. “And Blister — that’s me — is smarter than both of them put together. She knew she couldn’t kill Burn in a regular duel. It was her idea to involve all the other tribes and turn their SandWing throne battle into a world war. She’s probably waiting for the other two to kill each other.”

“Which one do we want to be queen?” Sunny asked. “We get to pick, right? When we fulfill the prophecy?”

“None of them,” Starflight said gloomily. “Blaze is about as smart as a concussed sheep, Blister is most likely plotting to become queen of all the tribes somehow, and if Burn wins, she’ll probably keep the war going just for fun. They’re all pretty nasty. I guess we’ll see what the Talons of Peace decide.”

“The Talons of Peace don’t get to decide,” Tsunami said, bristling. “They only think they’re in charge of us.”

“We can still hear them out,” Starflight argued. “They want what’s best for us and Pyrrhia.”

“Easy for you to say,” Glory snapped. The ruff around her neck flared orange. “You weren’t stolen from your home. The NightWings were pretty eager to hand over your egg, weren’t they?” Starflight flinched as if she’d burned him.

“Boring!” Clay shouted from his pile of rocks. “Stop fighting with each other! Come fight me for this treasure instead!”

“No one knows what the scavenger did with the sand dragon treasure,” Starflight said in his “top of the class” voice, turning away from Glory. “Among other things, he stole the Lazulite Dragon, the gold SandWing scepter, and the Eye of Onyx, which had been in the SandWing treasury for hundreds of years.”

Clay stamped his feet. Starflight’s lectures always made his scales itch. “I just want to fight somebody!” he said. Somebody who wasn’t trying to beat him into a violent rage, preferably.

As if the thought had summoned her, Kestrel suddenly loomed in the entrance of the cave.

“WHAT is going on in here?” Kestrel’s booming voice made all five dragonets jump to attention. Sunny slipped as she tried to scramble to her feet, and Starflight jumped forward to catch her.

The enormous red SkyWing slithered into the cave, glaring down at them. “This doesn’t look like studying,” she hissed.

“We’re s-s-s-sorry,” Sunny stammered.

“No, we’re not.” Tsunami shot the SandWing a glare. “We were studying. We were acting out the death of the queen that started the whole war.”

“You mean play-acting,” Kestrel growled. “You are too old for games.”

“When were we ever young enough for games?” Glory muttered.

“It wasn’t a game,” Tsunami said. “It was a different way of learning the history. What’s wrong with that?”

“And now you’re talking back,” Kestrel said. She looked smug, as she always did when Tsunami got in trouble. “That means no sleeping in the river tonight.” Tsunami scowled. Kestrel tapped the pile of scrolls by the entrance with one claw. “The rest of you, learn from the SeaWing’s mistakes and study the correct way.”

“That’s not fair.” Clay spoke up as Kestrel turned to go, even though it made his heart pound. “We were all doing the same thing. We should all be punished.” Glory shook her head at him, but beside him, Sunny nodded.

Kestrel stared down at Clay. “I know who the ringleader was. Cut off the head, and the problem goes away.”

“You’re going to cut off Tsunami’s head?” Sunny squeaked.

Glory sighed. “It’s a metaphor, featherbrain.”

“Now go to bed,” Kestrel said. She turned and swept out of the cave, knocking over Starflight’s neat stacks of scrolls as she went.

Clay nudged Tsunami’s dark blue shoulder with his snout. “Sorry. We tried.”

“I know, thanks,” Tsunami said, brushing her wing against his. “Hey, Sunny, would you mind taking those scrolls back to our sleeping cave?”

The small gold dragon brightened. “Sure, I can do that!” She hurried to the entrance, gathered the scattered scrolls in her front talons, and whisked out of the cave.

“I can’t stand this much longer,” Tsunami said as soon as Sunny was gone. “We have to get out of here, and soon.”

Clay glanced at Glory and Starflight, who didn’t look surprised. “You talked to them about it?”

“Of course,” Tsunami said. “I needed their help figuring out an escape plan.” Clay couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t asked him for any escape plan ideas. Even the dragons who liked him thought he was pretty useless.

“I’m not sure we’re ready,” Starflight said, wrinkling his forehead. “There’s so much we haven’t learned yet. . . .”

“That’s what the teachers want us to think!” Tsunami’s blue scales shifted as she shook herself from head to tail. “But we’ll never know until we get out of these horrible caves and see the world for ourselves.”

“What about the prophecy?” Clay asked. “Shouldn’t we wait two more years?”

“I don’t see why,” Glory said. “I’m with Tsunami. Destiny is destiny, right? So whatever we do must be the right thing. We don’t need a bunch of ancient dragons telling us how to save the world. They’re not in the prophecy.”

“When do we tell Sunny?” Starflight asked, glancing at the cave’s dark opening.

“Not until the last minute,” Tsunami said fiercely. “You know she can’t keep a secret. Starflight, promise you won’t say anything to her.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” he said. “She’s not going to like it, though. She thinks everything is great here.”

“Of course she does,” Tsunami said. “She doesn’t care that we get treated like cracked eggs even though we’re supposed to be the key to peace or whatever.”

“She cares,” Starflight said defensively. “She just doesn’t whine about it.”

“Yowch,” said Glory.

Tsunami whirled to glare at Starflight, her gills pulsing. “Say that to my face.”

“I am saying it to your face,” he said. “Or was I saying it to your rear end? It’s easy to get the two confused.” He ducked behind Clay before Tsunami could even bare her teeth at him.

“Hey, stop. Quit snarling at each other like mini Kestrels,” Clay said, standing up to keep his bulk between Tsunami and Starflight. “Nobody’s happy here. Sunny deals with it differently, that’s all. But remember what we decided — we five stick together or else everything gets worse, right?”

Starflight hunched his wings forward, muttering.

“Clay’s right,” Glory said. “The last thing we want is to be like Kestrel or Webs or Dune.”

Tsunami hissed for a moment, then shook herself. “All right, I know. I’m trying. But this place is slowly killing me,” she said. Clay shivered at the fierce look on her face. He would not want to be the dragon standing in her way.

“As soon as we have a plan, we go,” Tsunami said, looking them each in the eye. “Let’s see them force our destiny on us when they can’t find us anymore.”

Suddenly there was a thundering crash from the central cave. Clay heard the entrance boulder slam back into place, and then the rumble of heavy footsteps. From the extra squish-flap sound of them, he knew that it must be Webs.

“Something’s happening,” Tsunami said. She hurried to the door, her ears twitching and the spiny ridge along her back standing straight up. “We have to go listen.”

Starflight spread his wings slowly. “I’m sure we’ll find out what the fuss is in the morning.”

“I don’t want to wait that long.” Tsunami spun around to jab his underbelly with her tail, and he tipped backward with a grunt. “Don’t be a smoke-breather! Let’s go!” She whirled out of the cave.

Clay winced as his sore muscles sprang into action. He followed Glory to the central cave. Glory’s scales were already changing to match the mottled gray-and-black rocks. In a moment she’d be nearly impossible to see.

Starflight slipped past to join her, and the two of them hurried away toward the tunnel that led to the big dragons’ cave. They vanished almost immediately into the shadows. Hidden by their coloring, they’d get as close as they could to eavesdrop.

But Clay and Tsunami had an even better shot of hearing everything, if they hurried. Tsunami was already charging across the cave to the river.

“What about Sunny?” Clay called quietly. He could hear the little SandWing rummaging around in her sleeping cave, putting scrolls away.

“We’ll come up with something to tell her later,” Tsunami hissed back.

Clay felt sorry that Sunny was the only one who didn’t know about their spying games, but they’d learned their lesson about trusting her with secrets years ago. Sunny hadn’t meant to tell Dune about the pile of rocks the dragonets were collecting. Their plan was to build a tower to the sky hole, back when they were too small to fly. They’d only wanted to stick their heads out and look around. But one day Sunny forgot to be careful around Dune, and the next day all the collected rocks were gone from their hiding place. That was the end of that plan — and of Sunny getting to know anything.

Tsunami disappeared into the river with a nearly soundless splash. The pale green flecks under her dark blue scales shimmered as she swam upriver. Clay dove in after her, wishing he could see in the dark like she could. At least she’d remembered to activate the glow-in-the-dark stripe along her tail.

MudWings couldn’t breathe underwater like SeaWings, but they could hold their breath for more than an hour. So whenever the dragonets wanted to spy on their guardians, Clay and Tsunami could use the river to get closer than the others.

He caught up to the SeaWing as she was wriggling through the underwater gap in the cave walls. It made Clay nervous every time, squeezing through such a small space. He wished he hadn’t eaten that extra cow at dinner.

His claws scrabbled on the rocks, catching in the crevices. There was a brief, terrifying moment as his midsection got stuck. Would he drown down here? Would the prophecy be ruined because of an extra cow?

Then, with a whoosh of bubbles, he popped through and shot after Tsunami.

Her tail stripe went dark as they swam quietly into the guardians’ cave. The three older dragons hardly paid any attention to the river, except for Webs, who sometimes slept in the shallows. It would never occur to them that two pairs of dragonet ears might be poking out of the water, listening.

Clay drifted to a stop near the entrance while Tsunami swam to the far side of the room. That way at least one of them could hear, no matter where the minders were talking.

Tonight, however, Clay was pretty sure everyone could hear everything, including Glory and Starflight in the passageway outside. From the way Kestrel was shouting, it was possible even the SkyWings up in the mountain peaks could hear her.

“Coming here? With no warning? After six years, suddenly he’s interested?” A jet of fire shot out of her snout and blasted the nearest rock column.

“Maybe he wants to make sure they’re ready to stop the war,” Webs suggested.

Dune snorted. “These dragonets? Then he’s going to be very disappointed.” He eased himself onto a flat boulder, stretching his foreleg stump and mangled wing toward the fire. The big SandWing dragon never discussed his scars or how he lost his foot, but the dragonets could guess from the anger in his voice whenever he talked about the war.

The fact that he couldn’t fly was probably why he was chosen for underground dragonet-minding duty. He clearly wasn’t picked for his warm, nurturing personality.

“We’ve done our best,” Webs said. “The prophecy chose these dragonets, not us.”

“Does he even know what happened?” Kestrel demanded. “Does he know about the broken egg and the RainWing? Or the defective SandWing?”

Clay winced. Poor Sunny. He floated closer, keeping his bulky brown length below the surface of the dark water. Through the ripples he could see the blurred shapes of the large dragons gathered around the fire.

Webs flapped his wings. “I’m not sure what he knows or why he cares. The message just said ‘Morrowseer is coming.’ I’m supposed to meet him and bring him here tomorrow.”

Morrowseer. That sounded familiar. Clay racked his brain. A dragon from history class? One of the tribe rulers? No, it couldn’t be; all the tribes were ruled by queens.

“I’m not worried about Sunny,” Dune said. “We followed the prophecy’s instructions. It’s not our fault she’s the way she is. But the RainWing — he’s not going to like that.”

A deep growl rumbled in Kestrel’s throat. “I don’t like it either. I never have.”

“Glory’s not that bad,” Webs argued. “She’s smarter than she wants us to know.”

“You overestimate her because you brought her here,” Dune said. “She’s lazy and worthless like the rest of her tribe.”

“And she’s not a SkyWing,” Kestrel snapped. “We’re supposed to have a SkyWing.”

Clay wished Glory didn’t have to hear all this. The guardians never hid how they felt about her, and she never acted like she cared. But he wished he could tell her she was just as important and smart as any SkyWing.

“Well, I never thought Morrowseer would come look at them!” Webs said. “After he dropped off Starflight’s egg, I assumed we’d never see him again. The NightWings have nothing to do with the war.”

So he’s a NightWing. Which means superpowered and mysterious and full of himself. That was all Clay could remember about NightWings. He found himself actually wishing he could get a lecture from Starflight. The epic wonderfulness of NightWings was the black dragonet’s favorite topic.

“Did the Talons say what he wants?” Kestrel asked.

“Well, it’s his prophecy,” Webs said. “I guess he wants to make sure it’ll actually come true.”

Morrowseer. Clay felt a jolt run through him, like the stinging shock he sometimes got when Dune whacked him with his barbed tail for not paying attention.

Morrowseer was the NightWing who had spoken the dragonet prophecy ten years ago. They had learned about him in history, but it was one of many facts Clay could never remember. Who had delivered the prophecy never seemed as important as who was in the prophecy.

But maybe Morrowseer was more important than Clay had realized. After all, he was coming to see them. Perhaps he would take them out into the world. Perhaps they didn’t need to escape after all.

Perhaps everything was about to change.

Clay had never really believed the legends about NightWings. Secretive dragons who could read minds? A hidden kingdom that no one could find? A mystery queen, the power to see the future, the way they appeared from darkness to deliver prophecies that shaped the world … it all sounded like fairy tales, about as likely as a world ruled by scavengers instead of dragons.

Besides, Clay knew Starflight, and Starflight was many things — annoying, long-winded, smart, too serious — but he had no magical powers and he was never, ever scary.

But the next evening, when a dragon black as a bottomless pit loomed out of the shadows of the entrance tunnel, Clay felt all the rumors about NightWings come crashing into his head like a collapsing rock wall.

Morrowseer was even bigger than Kestrel, and five times more terrifying. He spread his jagged, batlike wings and peered down at the dragonets lined up in front of him. He had silver scales like stars on the underside of his wings, like Starflight did, but on him they seemed to glitter from a great distance and cast a cold glow.

He looked like he could easily rip off each of their heads in one bite. He also looked like he already hated the five dragonets. Which wasn’t what Clay had expected at all. Were they such a disappointment already?

Maybe Morrowseer was reading their minds and knew how confused they were about the prophecy. Or maybe he was seeing the future and his visions were all of failure, failure, failure.

Clay could feel Sunny trembling at his side. He felt the same way, petrified in place, as if his scales were being slowly peeled off, one by one, while the giant NightWing inspected them.

On his other side, Starflight was more still than Clay had ever seen him. Starflight always froze when he was frightened. It was as if he hoped that by not moving, he’d disappear from view and the danger would pass right by.

Clay couldn’t see Glory, but he knew when Morrowseer saw her. The huge black dragon stared down at the RainWing dragonet for a small eternity. His snout twitched with ripples of disgust. A forked black tongue slipped over his teeth.

Clay wished his own wings were as vast as the cavern itself so he could hide his friends from Morrowseer. He wished his talons were as huge as the stalagmites and as sharp as the rock shards. He wished he were big enough to be brave and brave enough to be big. He’d never wanted anything so much as he wanted to protect his friends from this tall, hissing, scornful, immensely dangerous dragon.

He really, really hoped that Morrowseer wasn’t reading his mind right then. Think about cows think about cows think about delicious fat cows. . . .

Morrowseer pivoted his head slowly to glare down at Kestrel. He lifted one long claw and pointed at Glory.

“What. Is. THAT?” he said, his voice loaded with enough venom to kill twenty dragons in midflight.

Starflight took a step back, and Clay saw Glory. She was sitting on her haunches with her long tail curled over her talons. Trails of violet and gold chased each other through her scales. Only the shades of flame around her feathery ears hinted that she was upset. She stared calmly back at Morrowseer.

“There was an accident,” Kestrel said. “We lost the SkyWing egg, so we had to get another one somewhere —”

“From the RainWings?” Morrowseer interrupted scathingly.

“It was his idea,” Kestrel snarled, whipping her tail toward Webs. “He brought her egg here!”

“At least we have five dragonets,” said Webs. “That’s what matters.”

Morrowseer peered down his long black snout at Glory. His eyes shifted to Sunny, who let out a tiny squeak and sank a little lower toward the ground. “More like four and a half,” he grunted. “Are you supposed to be the SandWing? Don’t you eat? What’s wrong with you?”

There was a long, horrible pause while Sunny tried to squeak out an answer.

“She does,” Tsunami blurted. “She eats fine. As much as anyone.”

“It’s not her fault she’s small,” Starflight chimed in, to Clay’s surprise.

“She’s a good fighter,” Clay said. “And so is Glory.”

“Stop talking now,” Morrowseer said, and silence dropped over them. His sharp, menacing gaze landed on Clay.

THINK ABOUT COWS THINK ABOUT COWS THINK ABOUT COWS. . . .

The tall NightWing turned to the three guardians. “Something has gone very wrong here.”

“Yes!” Tsunami burst in again. “It has, and I can tell you what. We’re treated like prisoners! We’ve never been outside these caves, not once. All we know about this world we’re supposed to save is what we’ve learned in scrolls. We’re supposed to be the most important dragonets in the world, but those three treat us like blind salamanders!”

Clay couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t she scared of Morrowseer, too?

“Tsunami, hold your tongue,” Dune snapped.

“I will not,” she cried. “Please get us out of here,” she said to Morrowseer. “Take us away with you.”

Please DON’T, Clay thought. I mean, think about cows, think about cows. … Now that he’d seen the NightWing, he’d rather stay trapped here.

“Ungrateful lizard!” Kestrel growled.

Without warning, Morrowseer lunged at Tsunami. His teeth flashed like bright white lightning, darting toward her neck. It really is like the night sky falling on you, Clay thought, and then discovered he was moving, too. He flung himself at the NightWing’s huge, ridged back before he could stop to think about what he was doing.

His claws sank into the small gaps between the shifting black scales, scrabbling for a hold. His tail thrashed as he tried to balance. Below him he saw Tsunami rolling away and spinning to fight back. Her blue talons slashed at Morrowseer’s nose and underbelly.

Clay tried frantically to remember his battle training. He flattened himself along the big dragon’s back, snaked his neck forward, and bit down as hard as he could.

OW. His jaw exploded with pain, and he reared back. In the black-on-black scales, it was impossible to find a weak spot.

Morrowseer jumped away from Tsunami and shook his whole body violently. Clay lost his grip and went flying through the air. He landed with a jarring thud, sliding halfway into the river.

As he staggered to his feet, he saw Tsunami and Morrowseer facing each other in battle positions. Morrowseer made a grinding noise deep in his throat. He stepped back and swung his tail around into view.

Clinging to Morrowseer’s tail, her teeth firmly planted in the vulnerable spot near the end, was Sunny. Clay wished he’d remembered about that spot, which every dragon had, no matter which tribe they were from.

“Ha,” Morrowseer rumbled. “That’s a surprise.” He pried Sunny loose with his front talons, as if she were just a tiny bloodsucking insect.

“That one will do,” Morrowseer said, pointing at Tsunami. None of the big dragons had moved at all as he attacked their charges.

Neither had Glory.

Neither had Starflight.

Clay staggered up beside his NightWing friend, who was doing an excellent imitation of a stalagmite. Starflight lowered his head and avoided Clay’s eyes.

“And that one will do.” Morrowseer nodded at Clay. Kestrel snorted.

The NightWing approved of him? Clay was confused. It wasn’t as if Clay’s attack had done any good. Even when Clay was defending his friend, apparently he couldn’t get angry enough to drag out his inner monster. Couldn’t Morrowseer hear everyone thinking about how Clay was going to let them all down?

“This one . . .” Morrowseer studied Sunny, from her harmless tail to her weirdly golden scales and moss-green eyes. “We’ll have to see.”

“We followed the prophecy,” Dune insisted. “She wasn’t in a clutch of eggs — I found her egg alone, buried out in the desert. Just like the prophecy said.”

The guardians never talked about where they got the dragonets’ eggs. Sunny stared at Dune hopefully, but he fell silent under Morrowseer’s dark eyes.

“As for you,” Morrowseer said to Starflight, “I assume you used your NightWing powers to figure out that I wasn’t going to harm the SeaWing. Perhaps you even had a vision of my visit today. No doubt you already know that I’m going to take you into the next cavern for a private conversation.”

Clay shuddered. A “private conversation” with Morrowseer sounded about as much fun as having his ears roasted. He did not envy Starflight as the two NightWings slithered toward the study room. Morrowseer paused in the archway and looked back at the guardians.

“We’ll talk about her later.” He didn’t look at Glory, but everyone else did. She flicked her ears and lifted her chin a little higher as Morrowseer’s footsteps faded away down the tunnel.

What does that mean? Clay worried. What was there to talk about?

“Stupid SeaWing,” Kestrel shot across the cave and struck Tsunami’s snout. “Complaining to the first strange dragon you see! Trying to make us look bad! Whining about your life, after all we’ve given up for you!”

“If you hate this, too, why don’t you let us go?” Tsunami shot back.

“This is for your safety,” Webs interjected. His voice was gentler than Kestrel’s, but Clay could tell he was angry from the way his long blue-green tail lashed on the floor. “That’s what all of this is for. The Talons of Peace need you to survive long enough to fulfill the prophecy. You have no idea how many dragons would love to get their claws on you five.”

“Or what they’d do to you if they did,” Dune growled.

“Our job is to keep you alive,” Kestrel said. “Or else I’d have strangled you myself a long time ago.”

“Great,” Tsunami said. “Well, it’s been a terrific life. Thanks very much.”

Kestrel made the hissing, fire-is-coming noise. Clay grabbed Tsunami’s tail and tugged her back toward the river.

“We are grateful,” Sunny said, jumping in front of Kestrel. She stood up on her back legs, not even half the red dragon’s size. Her golden ears twitched. “We would much rather be alive than not alive! We’re glad you keep us that way, really we are.”

“Come on,” Webs said. He prodded Kestrel and Dune toward their cave. “We need to talk.”

“Now he has something to say,” Kestrel grumbled as the three of them clambered over the broken stalagmites.

Tsunami threw herself into the river and sank to the bottom in a stream of furious bubbles, where she curled up with her talons over her head.

It got very quiet in the cave. Sunny and Clay exchanged glances, then looked over at Glory.

The RainWing was sitting in the same spot, with her tail still neatly curled around her feet. She yawned. Clay wished he could ever be that calm. It was as if nothing bothered her at all.

“Are you all right?” Clay asked. He came around and sat in front of her, studying her face. Sunny sidled up beside Glory, brushing her violet wings with her own smaller golden ones.

“Of course,” Glory said. “I mean, we knew that was going to happen. It’s not like the minders have been talking about how awesome I am this whole time.”

“But you are,” Clay said. Glory tilted her head at him. “Awesome,” he insisted. “They just don’t see —”

“They see a RainWing,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t care. It’s their own fault for bringing me here.”

“Why didn’t you fight Morrowseer when we did?” Sunny asked. “Then maybe he’d know how brave and fierce you are, too.”

“Why bother?” Glory said. “It was obviously a test, and I’d already failed.” A splotch of sky-blue scales on her back pulsed, and then the color began to spread across her other scales, eating up the purple and gold.

“Well, we don’t care what the prophecy says or what Morrowseer thinks,” Clay said stoutly. “You’re our fifth dragonet. We don’t want anyone else.”

Glory gave him a rueful look. “That’s very sweet.” She yawned again. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“Now?” Sunny said, alarmed. “Is that a good idea?”

Glory fell asleep every day, usually after lunch, for a couple of hours, but Clay had expected her to stay awake while Morrowseer was around. He knew he wouldn’t want the big dark dragon to catch him sleeping. He glanced at the tunnel to the study room, wondering uneasily how far the NightWing’s telepathy reached and whether he could read Clay’s mind through rock.

“I’m tired,” Glory snapped. “And they all think I’m lazy anyway. Nothing I do can change that.”

Clay knew Glory wasn’t lazy. She worked harder than everyone at battle training and learning the dragon war’s history, even though none of the big dragons ever noticed. She just had to nap in the middle of the day, probably for some RainWing reason. Although it didn’t seem to help: Glory was just as prickly and tired after napping as she was before.

“Wake me if anything exciting happens,” Glory said. “But make sure it’s actually exciting, not Sunny-exciting.” She gave Sunny a friendly nudge with her snout, and the SandWing squeaked in protest.

“I don’t think everything is exciting!” Sunny flapped her wings. “But you guys don’t think enough things are exciting.”

“Think of it this way,” Glory said. “Time to leave the caves and fulfill the prophecy: exciting. You caught another weird-looking white crab in the river: not exciting. Got it?” She poked Sunny again, uncurled her tail, now fully blue, and slipped inside her sleeping cave.

Sunny blinked at Clay.

“I know,” he said. “That last crab was really weird looking.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” she said.

“I wouldn’t have minded if you’d woken me up to see it,” Clay added kindly.

“Well, good,” she said. “I know. That’s why you got to eat half of it instead of anyone else.” She headed for her favorite stalagmite and started to climb it, hooking her claws in the holes that dotted the bulbous shape.

Clay clambered up the rocks beside her. “Hey, Sunny,” he said. “What would you think about running away?”

She paused and looked at him with shocked green eyes. “You mean leaving the caves? Without our guardians? Oh, no, we couldn’t. We have to do what the prophecy says.”

“Do we?” he asked. “I mean, we do,” he said quickly as she nearly lost her grip on the stalagmite in surprise. “But what if the Talons don’t understand the prophecy any better than we do? Maybe we need to get out and stop the war our own way.”

Sunny settled on top of the stalagmite and coiled her tail around it, balancing on her back legs. She reached up toward the stalactites that were poking sharply down from the top of the cave. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Clay. If we just follow the prophecy, everything will be all right.” Her claws batted at the tip of the lowest stalactite, but she was still too small to reach it. She sat back down with a frustrated sigh.

Clay glanced at the soft blue glow coming from Glory’s cave. Follow the prophecy. But he couldn’t help thinking that a real prophecy would have included Glory.

What if the prophecy was wrong?

It seemed like a long time later when Starflight finally slunk back into the main hall with Morrowseer close behind him. Clay couldn’t tell whether Starflight had told Morrowseer the truth — that he didn’t have visions or read minds. He was just ordinary, like the rest of the dragonets. But who would be brave enough to tell Morrowseer that?

The enormous NightWing slithered off to the guardians’ cave without a word to Sunny or Clay. Starflight glanced at them, then turned and headed for his sleeping cave.

Clay hurried after him.

“What happened?” he asked. “What did he say to you?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it,” Starflight said stiffly. He sat down in the middle of their cave, his wings askew behind him, and started poking through the scrolls on the floor.

“It’s over here,” Clay said, nudging a fat scroll with silver letters that had rolled under his sleeping ledge. Starflight hooked it over with one talon, tucked it under a wing, and carried it up to his ledge. He curled up with his tail draped over his nose and started reading.

“Wow,” Clay said. “So it was that bad?” Tales of the NightWings was Starflight’s favorite scroll, and he always read it when he was upset or fighting with one of the other dragonets.

The tip of Starflight’s tail twitched. “I have a lot to learn,” he said.

“But you already know everything!” Clay said. “You have to be the smartest dragonet in all of Pyrrhia. Couldn’t he tell that by reading your mind?”

Starflight didn’t answer.

“I thought he liked you,” Clay said. “Surely he said something about what a great and noble dragon you must be because you’re a NightWing.”

A long, tired breath whooshed out of Starflight’s snout. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s exactly what he told me, actually.”

“Oh,” Clay said. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Did he say when you’ll get your powers?”

Starflight fidgeted with the scroll, shredding a corner of it between his claws. Clay had never seen him upset enough to damage a scroll without noticing. He wished he could say something helpful, but he couldn’t think of a single useful thing to say about NightWings.

“At least you’re not a RainWing,” he tried. “Did Morrowseer say anything about Glory?”

Starflight frowned at him over the edge of the rock. “Not much. He said, ‘Don’t worry about the RainWing. I’ll take care of it.’ ”

Clay felt a cold chill climb up through the stone floor and spread through his scales. “What does that mean? What’s he going to do?”

“How should I know?” Starflight poked his nose back into the scroll. “Maybe she’ll get to go home. She’s probably the luckiest of all of us.”

The pulse of fear pounding in Clay’s head disagreed. He couldn’t see the guardians just releasing Glory, not after all the years of secrecy.

“We have to go spy on them,” he said, jumping to his feet. “We have to know what they’re planning.” He stopped halfway out of the cave and stamped one foot in frustration. “Oh, no, we can’t. Morrowseer will know we’re there.”

“Right,” Starflight said. “He’ll hear you thinking all your big, loud, worried thoughts.”

“You don’t know that my thoughts are loud and worried,” Clay said. “Maybe they’re quiet and very serene.”

Starflight snorted with amusement, the first happy sound he’d made since Morrowseer showed up. Even through his worry, Clay was pleased.

“What are you doing?” Sunny’s anxious voice echoed across the main hall. “What’s that for?” The heavy tread of dragon footsteps reached their ears, along with an ominous clanking. “Stop! Wait! You don’t have to do that!”

There was an enormous splash.

Clay raced into the big cave with Starflight close behind him. He skidded to a halt, horrified. Kestrel and Dune were standing on the bank of the river, holding a length of iron chain between their talons. Behind them, Morrowseer was holding Sunny back with his tail as the tiny golden dragon tried to climb over him.

Webs emerged from the river, dragging a writhing, hissing ball of blue scales. Kestrel and Dune threw the chain around Tsunami’s neck and wrapped it around one of her legs. The three guardians hauled her over to one of the rock columns that stretched from the floor to the ceiling high above. Dune flung the chain around the column twice, binding Tsunami with barely three steps to move in any direction.

Kestrel took the two ends of chain and blasted them with a bolt of flame. The metal melted into a bubbling mass, welded together.

Tsunami was trapped.

“Maybe some time away from the river will teach you to be grateful for what you have,” Kestrel growled.

It all happened so fast, Clay didn’t have time to figure out what was happening, let alone stop it, before it was too late. He let out a yell of dismay and charged across the cavern.

“Let her go!” He grabbed the chain and let go at once, hissing with pain at the searing heat.

“You’ll regret this,” Tsunami snarled. She clawed at the chain around her back leg, but pulling on it tightened the loop around her neck. With a hiss, she stopped struggling. “When we’re free — when my family hears about this — when the rest of the world finds out how you treated the dragonets of destiny —”

“All your big dreams of your wonderful family,” Kestrel mocked her. “They don’t care about you. When it’s time to fulfill the prophecy, you’ll be alive, and the Talons of Peace will have you, and that’s all that matters.”

“Why are you doing this?” Sunny cried. “Tsunami’s the good one! She’s wonderful! If anyone can save the world, it’s her.”

“Actually, tiny SandWing,” Morrowseer rumbled, “the dragonet you should believe in is Starflight over there.” He nodded at Starflight, still rooted in place by the sleeping cave. Starflight ducked his head. “NightWings are natural leaders. You do what he says, and you’ll be all right.”

Clay glanced over at Starflight and saw Glory standing in the archway of her own sleeping cave. Morrowseer narrowed his eyes at her.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said to the guardians. “To make sure that everything has been … dealt with.”

“We understand,” Kestrel said. Together she and Dune rolled the boulder aside. Morrowseer squeezed through the gap and disappeared into the blackness without a backward glance.

“This is for your own good,” Webs said, stopping in front of Tsunami. She raked her talons at him, and he stepped back. “We only want to keep you safe. Maybe this isn’t the perfect way, but —”

“But dragonets don’t know what’s best for them,” Dune said as the boulder thudded back into place. “You need us, whether you like it or not.”

“You were all awful today,” Kestrel said. “No dinner for any of you. Go to bed, and I don’t want to hear a squawk out of anyone until morning.”

“Really? What else are you going to do to me?” Tsunami challenged her. “What if I feel like singing all night?” She started howling in her off-key voice. “Oh, the dragonets are coming! They’re coming to save the day! They’re coming to fight, for they know what’s right, the dragonets, hooray!”

“Your fault,” Dune snarled at Webs. “I told you not to teach them that horrible bar song.”

“OH, THE DRAGONETS ARE COMING!” Tsunami bellowed even louder.

“We have more chains!” Kestrel yelled in her ear. “We could throw one around your snout if you would like me to force you to be quiet.”

Tsunami paused, glaring at her mutinously, then took another breath in and opened her mouth.

“Or we could chain up one of your friends,” Kestrel offered. “Perhaps Clay would like to spend the night hanging from a stalactite, so you have some company out here.”

Clay shifted uneasily on his feet, wondering if there was anywhere he could hide out of Kestrel’s reach before she could grab him.

Tsunami snapped her jaws shut and lay down with her head turned away from all the dragons. Her gills fluttered furiously, but she kept quiet.

“Much better,” Kestrel said. She stomped off to her tunnel, her red scales flaring brightly in the fire’s reflection. Webs followed her with his wet tail leaving a darker trail behind them.

Sunny pounced on Dune’s tail before he could go after them. “Please don’t leave her like this,” she said. “I know you’re not that mean.”

Dune shook her off. “We’re doing what we have to.” He went after the others.

As soon as they were gone, Clay tried tugging on Tsunami’s chains again. They were hopelessly strong.

“Clay, stop,” Tsunami whispered. “You know what you have to do. Go, quickly!”

Clay shivered, dreading the cold water, but she was right. For the first time, spying on the guardians was really important.

He ran over to the river and dove in. Through the water, he could hear the muffled echo of Sunny’s nervous squeak as he swam against the current to the rock wall. Without Tsunami’s glow-in-the-dark scales to guide him, it took longer than usual to find the gap that led through to the other cave. But finally he felt open space under his claws, and he ducked and squeezed through.

His heart was hammering in his chest as he popped through into the cave. Slowly he paddled to the surface and poked his ears out into the air.

This wasn’t the loud confrontation they’d heard the previous night. This time, the three big dragons were huddled around the fire, whispering. None of them glanced at the river as Clay floated closer.

“When tomorrow?” Webs asked.

Kestrel leaned toward the fire, baking her scales an even brighter red. “He’ll be back by midday. It has to be done by then.” Her tail was coiled in a tight knot beside her. “He doesn’t want to see her again.”

Clay clenched his talons under the water. They had to be talking about Glory.

“Well, I’m not doing it,” Webs said.

Dune shot him a withering look. “No one thought you would.”

“Even though this is all your fault,” said Kestrel.

“I still think we need five of them,” Webs snapped. “What’s he going to do about that?”

“He’ll find us a SkyWing,” Kestrel said. “Properly this time. No colorful substitutions.”

They all went quiet for a moment, staring into the fire.

“So, how and when,” Dune said in his no-nonsense military voice. “Drowning would be simplest.” He glared at Webs.

“I joined the Talons of Peace to stop killing dragons,” Webs said. “I won’t argue with Morrowseer, but I’m not doing it myself.”

“It has to be me,” Kestrel said in a choked, tense voice. “She’s just a RainWing, but she still might get away from you.” She nodded at Dune’s missing foot and the long scar that ran through his mangled wing.

“But can you go through with it?” Webs asked. “Isn’t it too much like — I mean, we all know what happened —”

“That was totally different,” Kestrel snapped. “Glory is just a RainWing. I don’t care about her. I don’t even like her.” She blasted a ball of flames at the fire so it blazed up.

“If you’re sure . . .” Webs started.

“I’ll do it tonight while she’s sleeping,” Kestrel said. “I can get in there and break her neck before the others know what I’m doing, especially with the bossy one safely chained up. Tsunami’s the only one who could stop me.”

Shudders of horror were running through Clay so violently that he was afraid one of the big dragons would notice the waves on the water. He began paddling softly backward, but froze when he heard his name.

“Not Clay?” Dune asked. “He might try, at least.”

“He’ll definitely try,” Webs said. “Dumb as a rock, but he’s devoted to the other four.”

“It’s not natural, that much loyalty in a dragon,” Dune said. “Especially to dragons outside your own tribe.”

“I can handle him,” Kestrel said. “Even if he finally gets mad like we want him to, there’s nothing he can do to stop me.”

Clay had heard enough. He sank down below the surface and swam toward the gap in the wall.

What do we do? What can we do? What can I do?

There’s no time.

How do I save her?

It’s not true,” Sunny said. “They wouldn’t.”

“They definitely would,” said Tsunami. “They’ll do anything if they think it’s right for the prophecy.” The dragonets all looked at Glory, whose scales had gone pale green. Even her usual aloof expression was gone. She paced around Tsunami’s rock column, lashing her tail.

“But we won’t let them,” Clay blurted. He was still panting and dripping icy water on the stone floor. “Right, Tsunami? We’ll stop them.”

“You don’t have to get involved,” said Glory. “This is my problem, not yours.”

“How will you stop them?” Tsunami asked Clay, ignoring her. “Even all of you together are no match for Kestrel, especially with Dune helping her. And I can’t do anything.” She bared her teeth and snapped at her chains, pulling the one around her neck dangerously tight.

“So we escape,” Clay said. “Just like you wanted. We get you out of there and we escape, tonight. Right now.”

“Escape?” Sunny squeaked.

“Seriously,” Glory said. Apple-red stripes flickered across her ruff like lightning. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m the one that doesn’t fit in. I’ll — I’ll fight her or — or figure something out. . . .”

“Of course we have to do something,” Clay said fiercely.

“If escape were that easy, we’d have done it already,” Starflight pointed out. He stepped around Glory, stood up on his back legs, and tapped on the boulder that blocked the entrance. “This is the only way out. And they have it rigged on a mechanism that only the big dragons can move.”

“They do?” Clay said.

Starflight nodded. “You know how Dune never leaves, because he can’t fly? He has a stone that fits in this slot.” He tapped a grooved niche in the stone wall. “He turns it in here to unlock something so they can roll the boulder from inside the cave. But when Kestrel or Webs come from outside, there must be a lever or switch they use to open it from out there.”

“Oh.” Clay felt like an idiot for trying so hard to roll the big rock all these years. He’d never even noticed that Dune unlocked something before moving the boulder. He’d never thought twice about the oddly shaped stone that was always around the sand dragon’s neck.

“So can we steal Dune’s rock?” Sunny suggested.

“Terrible idea,” Glory said immediately.

“They’d catch us for sure,” Starflight said to Sunny, more kindly. “Especially tonight, when they’re already on high alert because of Morrowseer.”

“Well, then what about the sky —” Sunny asked.

“Is there any way to move the boulder without the rock?” Tsunami interrupted her.

Starflight shook his head. “Only from the outside. It’s impossible from in here. Believe me, I’ve thought about it.”

“Maybe the sky —” Sunny said.

“And we couldn’t force it?” Clay asked Starflight. “Even if we all leaned on it really hard?”

Starflight shook his head as Glory said, “This is all really sweet, guys, but you shouldn’t get in trouble for me. Morrowseer likes the rest of you. Just let me handle myself.”

“Stop that,” Tsunami snapped at her. “Acting like a martyr won’t help right now.”

Glory bristled. “I’m not acting like a martyr. I’m trying to make sure nobody gets killed for no reason.”

“Besides you,” Tsunami argued. “It’s fine if it’s you getting killed for no reason?”

“It just doesn’t matter,” Glory said. “I’m not even in the prophecy, so who cares what happens to me?”

“I swear I’m going to kill you myself,” Tsunami growled.

“Glory, she’s trying to say that we care,” Clay interjected. “In her usual gentle way.”

“Guys, what about the sky hole?” Sunny said in a rush, jumping into the brief pause in the conversation. “In the study room? Couldn’t we fly up to it and squeeze out?”

“Oh, Sunny, don’t be ridiculous,” Tsunami said.

“It’s way too small,” Starflight explained. “We’d never fit, especially Clay.”

“But maybe I might,” Sunny said. “I could climb out and then go around and open the boulder from the outside, like Starflight said. Right? And I could let you all out?”

Clay brushed her wing and twined his tail around hers. Sunny hadn’t even thought of escaping before today, and yet she was volunteering for the most dangerous part of it without any hesitation.

“It won’t work,” Starflight said. “I’m sorry, Sunny. I’ve flown up to the hole when no one was around.”

“Me too,” said Tsunami.

“Me too,” said Glory.

Clay felt slow. He’d sat below the sky hole often enough, watching the stars or clouds or rain overhead, but he’d never flown up to it or tried to climb out. Apparently the other dragonets had thought about escape a lot more than he had.

“The hole is smaller than you think,” Starflight said to Sunny. “I can barely fit my head through it. It’s not a way out.”

“The minders wouldn’t have left it there if it was,” Glory said. She stopped next to Tsunami, waves of dark green pulsing from her ears to her tail. “They’re too careful. There’s no way to escape.”

“There must be,” Clay said desperately. He could feel time slipping away. Kestrel might come down to kill Glory at any moment. She wouldn’t care if they all saw her do it.

He could tell that Tsunami was thinking hard. She kept looking at him like she wanted to say something, then stopped herself.

“What if we tried talking to them?” Sunny offered hesitantly. “Maybe we could convince them to let her go instead?”

Glory snorted. Nobody else answered. Sunny sighed, pressing her wings back against her sides.

“You have an idea,” Clay said to Tsunami. “I can tell. You’ve been working on an escape plan forever.”

She wound her talons through the chains, hissing. “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “It was supposed to be me.”

He caught her sideways glance and followed her eyes to the river.

The river.

They’d only ever gone upstream, into the guardians’ cave. Downstream, the river flowed from the main cavern along the tunnel into the battle cave and then … Clay had no idea where it went. The roof of the battle cave sank lower and lower until the river disappeared. Clay had never explored underwater in the battle cave; he’d never wondered about where the river went.

But of course Tsunami had.

“Do you know where the river goes?” he asked.

“No — I mean, I’ve seen the gap in the wall, but it’s even smaller than the one to the guardians’ cave,” she said. “I’ve never been through in case I couldn’t get back. But the river has to go somewhere.”

“Can we get out that way?” he asked.

“Not all of us,” she said. “Only me.”

“And me,” he said.

She shook her head. “Clay, you can’t. We have no idea what’s on the other side. You can only hold your breath for an hour — you could get trapped with no air and drown. And you can’t see in the dark like me. You’d be swimming blind into who knows what. It has to be a SeaWing who goes. It has to be me.”

“And even if you did get out,” Starflight said, “how would you find us again? How would you get back to this cave from the outside?”

“The sky hole,” Clay said, pouncing on an idea of his own at last. “You guys start a fire in the study room, and I’ll follow the smoke back to you. Then I’ll know the entrance is nearby, and once I find it, I can let you all out.”

Glory’s eyes glinted. “I can think of a few scrolls I’d like to burn.”

Clay grinned at the shocked expression on Starflight’s face. “Yeah, me too,” he said. “Throw The Sluglike Qualities of MudWings on there and think of me.”

“Stop joking about this,” Tsunami cried. “Clay, you can’t go, and that’s final. You’ll almost certainly die.”

“But Glory will die if I don’t,” he said. “Right? There’s no other way.”

Tsunami growled and thrashed her whole body, straining against the chains. The heavy links pressed into the scales of her neck, and she stopped with a cough.

“Wait, you won’t be able to see the smoke until daylight,” Sunny said worriedly. “Won’t Kestrel come for Glory before then?”

Clay’s hopes dropped like a boulder in his stomach. He hadn’t thought of that. He might not make it back in time — it might all be for nothing.

Then Glory smiled, and her scales shifted into a warm, rosy pink. “I know what to do,” she said. “Starflight’s method.”

“Act like a lump and hope no one notices you?” Tsunami said sarcastically.

“Hey!” Starflight protested.

“Exactly,” Glory said. She crouched down to the floor. Slowly, as if the stone were eating her alive, grays and browns and blacks crept over her scales. All her beautiful colors faded away. The shadows and crags behind her appeared perfectly reproduced, as if the dragonets were seeing right through her.

She closed her eyes and vanished.

“Wow,” Sunny said faintly. “I mean, I knew you could, but … I’d never . . .”

“The guardians don’t know I can do this.” They all jumped as Glory’s voice came from the top of a stalagmite. “I guess it’s a good thing we never studied RainWings after all. I’ll find a corner and hide. You don’t even have to risk the river, Clay. I could just stay like this.”

“For how long?” Starflight said. “Until you starve or one of them catches you accidentally?”

“Tsunami was right earlier,” Clay said. “We do need to get out of here, as soon as we can.”

Sunny gave Tsunami an unhappy look. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?” she asked, but no one answered her.

“All right,” said Glory with a sigh. Her green eyes appeared again, halfway across the cave. She was looking straight at Clay. “Do what you want, as long as you’re not doing it only for me. I’ll stay out of the way until Clay comes back to get us.”

Clay felt like the rosy pink color was rising up through his scales now. Glory trusted him. She believed he could do this.

He could save her. He could save all of them.

He just had to survive the river first.

“I hate this,” Tsunami called softly. “I hate this a lot.” She beat her wings against the chains that trapped her.

“I don’t love it either,” said Glory’s voice.

“Shhhh,” Starflight scolded from the riverbank. Clay stood in the shallows, shivering as the icy water washed over his talons. He wished he could take fire with him underwater. He wished he knew what he was getting into. He really, really wished he didn’t have to go alone.

But he had to do this. He glanced at the corner of the cave where Glory had disappeared.

“Are we sure this is the only way?” Sunny asked, splashing the river with her tail. “I bet I could think of some more ideas, with a little more time.”

“We don’t have any more time,” Clay said.

“Follow the current,” Starflight said to Clay. “Don’t leave the river. If it goes out into the world anywhere, the current should take you there.”

If, Clay thought.

“Stop and rest anytime you find a place to breathe,” Starflight went on. “If you can’t find a place where the river surfaces, don’t panic or you’ll run out of air faster.”

Clay felt like he was panicking already. When he thought about swimming into inky blackness with no idea if he’d ever breathe again, his whole body tightened with fear.

He felt the brush of wing tips next to his and turned. The river eddied around the blurry outline of Glory beside him.

“Go hide,” he whispered.

“Thank you, Clay,” she said quietly. “I’ll never admit I said this, but … I want you to know I would never have made it through the last six years without the four of you.”

“Same here,” Clay said. Growing up under the mountain without Glory, Sunny, Tsunami, and Starflight would have been too miserable to bear.

“Me too,” Starflight said.

Sunny nodded. She twined her tail in Glory’s and touched one of Clay’s talons.

“Good luck,” said Glory. She stepped out of the river and melted back into the shadows.

“Be really, really careful, Clay,” Tsunami said. Her chains were taut around her legs and neck as she leaned toward them. “Come back if you have to. Don’t keep going if it’s too dangerous.”

“Don’t you dare die,” Sunny added, flinging her forearms around his neck and beating his wings with hers.

“You all stay safe, too,” Clay said. He took a deep breath, then another. “I’ll be rolling away that boulder before you know it.” He couldn’t delay any longer. He nodded to his friends and dove into the river.

Swimming helped warm him a little, but his scales still felt crusted with ice by the time he’d made it down the tunnel to the battle cave. He swam to the far wall, where the rock sloped down into the water. He floated for a moment, feeling the current tugging him. Then he inhaled and dove down.

By the flickering light of the torches above, he could see the patch of wall that was darker than the rest. Tsunami was right; this hole was smaller than the gap to the guardians’ cave. Well, it was flatter, but wider, too, more like a snarling dragon mouth, complete with sharp outcroppings like teeth. He couldn’t see anything but darkness on the other side.

Clay reached one forearm into the hole and felt nothing but emptiness. Dark water rushed past him.

He arrowed to the surface and took the longest, deepest breath of his life, hoping it wouldn’t be his last. The water closed over his head in an awful, final kind of way. He tried not to think about that.

With a few swift kicks, he swam back to the hole and grabbed the rocks on either side to brace himself. He folded his wings tightly to his body and snaked his head through the hole. His shoulders followed, then his wings, scraping painfully against the stone teeth. His front talons found a lip of rock ahead of him and he seized it, pulling himself forward.

He felt his shoulders slip into open space just as his haunches got stuck. His back claws scrabbled for a grip. He tried to flatten himself to the rock, squishing himself sideways. He wriggled as hard as he could, remembering Starflight’s instructions. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t —

He popped loose so suddenly that he spun forward, head over tail, and had to flail around with his wings to straighten himself out. As he did, he felt stone brushing his wing tips on either side. Cautiously he reached out into the darkness.

Rock pressed closely around him. The river was narrow here and the current was strong. It carried him forward even when he wasn’t trying to swim. Everything was pitch dark.

He tried paddling up to find the surface of the river, but his head barked painfully against a rock ceiling. There was no air here, only a tight channel filled by the river. He wasn’t even sure there was space to turn around if he wanted to go back.

But I don’t want to go back. I can’t go back.

Clay forced himself to swim, kicking his back legs, and waving his wings as much as he could in the cramped space. Water gurgled in his ears, as if it were laughing at his efforts. His heartbeat seemed louder than he’d ever noticed before.

He didn’t know how long he swam through the dark, twisting channel, but after a while his chest began to hurt. He had never actually tried holding his breath for an entire hour before. The dragonets only knew he could because that’s what it said about MudWings in a couple of scrolls. What if it took practice? What if only full-grown MudWings could do it? What if his lungs were still too small?

What if he drowned down here, alone, and his friends never knew what happened to him, and Kestrel killed Glory, and he really was the most useless dragonet in Pyrrhia?

I will not panic.

Clay climbed toward the surface for the hundredth time, setting his jaw stubbornly. Still only solid rock above him. But — it seemed like the rock was slanting upward. Was it? He reached his wings up to brush against the stone and swam faster.

The channel was definitely getting wider. He couldn’t feel the walls on either side of him anymore. Suddenly the rock above him disappeared as well. The strength of the current dropped away. It felt as if he’d swum out into a wide-open pool.

Clay beat his wings, rising up and up through the dark water, his tail lashing to drive him forward. He was deeper than he’d realized, far below the surface.

But — were those stars above him? He nearly sucked in a mouthful of water in excitement. Could he have made it outside already? Something was shining overhead. He could see small spots of light, like the night sky through the hole.

His head burst out of the water. Clay yelped with glee as he breathed in and out, in and out, grateful for air like he never had been before.

But his voice echoed back to him, bouncing off cave walls. This air didn’t smell like the sky, and he couldn’t hear anything beyond the stillness of rock and the fading echoes of his own cry.

He floated on the surface of the pool. The current was still moving sluggishly somewhere below his talons. All was darkness around him except for those points of light overhead.

Glowworms.

He was still under the mountain, in a cave full of thousands of glowworms.

The eerie little insects pulsed with a greenish light. Glowing tendrils hung from several of them, like a shimmering star curtain far above him and around him in the pool’s reflection. By their dim light, he could faintly see the distant arch of cave walls.

He wasn’t outside, but at least he was breathing. He followed Starflight’s advice, resting for as long as he dared. It was so cold in the water that he couldn’t feel the tip of his tail or the outer ridge of his wings. He tried breathing a spurt of fire up into the air, but his chest was too frozen to produce more than a flicker of flame. It was almost more than he could bear to make himself duck under the water again.

But finally he took another deep breath and dove.

For a terrible moment he was afraid he’d lost the current. He had no idea where he’d come in. He had no idea if the river even left this cave. What if this wide, silent pool was the end? Could he make it back to his friends, fighting that strong current the whole way?

Then he realized that when he floated, there was something carrying him along. It was weaker, but the current was still there. He spread his wings wide and stretched his tail down, letting himself drift like a leaf until he was sure which direction it went.

On the far side of the cave, in the dim light of the glowworms, he found a passageway where the river left the pool. The ceiling was still far above him. He could swim and breathe for a while longer.

Clay beat his wings to push himself forward through the water. It was peaceful and creepy at the same time, with all those star-worms glowing overhead like a million burning eyes. But it was much preferable to solid rock, complete darkness, and no air.

After a while, the current started to pick up again. Clay’s wings brushed against rocks jutting out of the river, and the glowworms were fewer and farther between. The darkness seemed to press down like Kestrel crushing him during battle training.

And then he heard the roaring.

Clay’s ears pricked up. Was it dragons? His first thought was that he was hearing Kestrel, roaring in fury as she discovered she had lost Glory and Clay. But he was too far away to hear anything like that.

Then he started to worry. What would Kestrel do when she found Clay and Glory missing? Would she punish the others — especially Tsunami, all chained up and unable to fight back?

He was so distracted worrying about his friends that it took him a while to notice that the roaring was getting louder. Suddenly he bashed into a boulder sticking out of the river. Reeling with pain, Clay spun in the water, flailing for a hold on something.

He crashed into another rock, bounced off, and slammed into yet another. The river was going so fast now that he couldn’t stop himself. He was being dragged toward the roaring at top speed.

With a jarring shock, he hit a spur of stone and dug in with all his talons. The rushing water whipped past him, seizing his tail and his wings with icy, desperate fingers. Clay fought his way out of the river until finally he stood, gasping, on bare rock.

He swept his tail around, trying to feel how big a rock he was standing on. It was big — it stretched farther than he could reach. He edged forward until he was sure he was standing on the bank of the river. A slope beside him rose away from the water.

He could feel a small trickle of a stream bubbling down the slope, joining the river near his talons. Clay dropped his head, trying to think. Now that he was out of the water, the cold was penetratingly deep. It coiled and twisted around his bones.

He coughed, hoping to summon a flame, but it was no use. Some dragons carried fire within them always — a SkyWing or a NightWing could blast flames anytime. SeaWings and IceWings could never breathe fire. But others, like MudWings, needed the right conditions — warmth most of all.

Remembering all his fire-breathing failures, Clay could hear Kestrel’s scornful voice hissing about what a disappointment he was. Not this time, he thought. I will figure this out.

He could guess what the roaring was, although he had never seen a waterfall. And he certainly didn’t want to experience one for the first time in total darkness. Even if he could fly over it, without his sight he’d be sure to run into something and crash.

But he couldn’t leave the river — could he?

Clay set one claw in the trickling stream and was surprised to find it was a little warmer than the river. Where did it come from? Up … surely up meant closer to the surface and the outside world.

He inhaled, hoping to catch the scent of the outside. But the only faint smell was of rotten eggs.

He set his jaw. The stream had to lead somewhere. Somewhere not over a waterfall. Clay spread his wings to feel the cave walls and crept up the stream, slipping now and then on the slick stone.

Soon he felt a ledge ahead of him. He climbed over it and splashed into a deeper pool. The rotten-egg smell was much stronger up here. He tried to wade forward, and the water crept up his legs. Suddenly he felt a stinging pain slice through the softer scales of his underbelly. With a hiss, he scrambled back up on the ledge.

His wings caught on something sticky overhead, and he felt the same sharp pain shivering through his tendons. He pulled his wings in close to his body, quickly, but the stickiness came with it and suckered onto his scales like enormous, globby leeches. It felt like the poison in Dune’s tail stabbing him in a thousand places, dissolving his skin from the inside out.

Clay let out an agonized yell and tried to stumble back down the slope to the river. But he’d lost the feel of the stream under his claws. He was stumbling blind over bare rocks. Frantic to escape the pain, he lunged toward the sound of the waterfall.

His head collided with something hard that knocked him to the cave floor.

As he lost consciousness, his last thought was, I failed them.

Freezing water splashed over Clay’s head. He woke up with a gasp as the rest of his body was plunged into the river. Strong talons gripped his shoulders, shoving him under the water.

He thrashed, terrified, and the current nearly dragged him away. The other dragon yanked his head into the air and shouted, “Quit struggling! I’m saving you!”

Clay went limp and let himself be shoved under again. He felt the sticky poison washing from his scales, although the pain lingered. As his panic died down, memory clicked on. He lunged back to the surface.

“Tsunami!” he yelped. He tried to wrap his wings around her, flapping and splashing in the dark.

Her claws dug into the spines along his back. “Seriously, Clay, stop moving!” She whacked his tail back into the water with her own. “I don’t know what this white stuff is, but it smells awful, and I think it’s trying to dissolve your scales. You stay in the water until it’s all gone.”

She moved his claws to the rock and helped him hang on against the fierce current while she poured more water over his head. He strained his eyes, trying to see her, or even a black shadow that might be her, but it was too dark. He clung to the feeling of her cold, wet scales against his. She was really here.

“How did you get free?” he asked through chattering teeth. They had to shout to be heard over the roaring waterfall.

“Fire,” Tsunami said. “I realized, if Kestrel’s flames could merge the chains together, maybe more fire would break them apart. She knew I couldn’t do it, and as usual she figured we wouldn’t help each other, because that’s not ‘dragon nature’ or whatever. It took Sunny and Starflight together to get their fire hot enough, but they blasted one of the links until it melted. And then I followed you, as fast as I could.”

Clay rested his head on the rock by her talons. It felt like the cracks between his scales were singing high-pitched arias of pain. “Well,” he said, “as you can see, it’s going great so far. I was just about to save the day.”

“You would have,” Tsunami said. “I’m sure you would’ve woken up soon and made it to the river on your own.” She batted one of his wings lightly with hers.

Clay wasn’t sure of that at all. But he wasn’t about to add “whining” to the list of things wrong with him.

“Did you see the glowworms?” he asked instead. “Kind of cool, right?”

“Oh, I can beat that.” A moment passed, and then Tsunami’s stripes began to glow along her wings and tail. She even turned on the whorls of light along her snout.

Dimly, the cave took shape around them. Clay had never been so happy to see anything in his life.

“Thanks,” he said. “It seems kind of unfair. You guys can see in the dark — it’s the rest of us who actually need glowing scales.”

Tsunami ducked her head in an odd, embarrassed way. “Well, they’re not meant to help us see,” she said.

Clay stretched his legs and tail under the water. The goop on his scales was gone, but the stinging was still there, battling the freezing numbness caused by the river. “Really?” he said, trying to take his mind off the pain. “Then why do you glow?”

“It’s — well —” He’d never seen Tsunami stammer over anything. Now he was really curious.

“Tell,” he said, splashing her.

“You know, you’re doing that thing you do,” she said, “where you talk about something ridiculous so you don’t have to deal with something serious.”

“Am not!” Clay protested. “You’re the one who’s ducking the question.”

“All right, fine!” she said with a grimace. “Glowing in the dark — Webs says it’s to attract other SeaWings. That’s how we choose our partners, or whatever.” She shoved his head under the water again, and he came up sputtering. “Now aren’t you sorry you asked?”

He was, a little bit. The idea of Tsunami leaving them for another SeaWing with cool glowing scales made Clay feel extra-blobby and drab.

“So, we can’t go up the rocks,” he said. “What do we do about the waterfall?” He hoped she wouldn’t ask whether his scales still hurt. He just had to tough it out until the pain went away.

She grinned. “We dive right over it!” she said. “How high could it be?”

“And how many sharp rocks could there be at the bottom?” he countered. “I’d like to see what we’re jumping off first, please.”

“All right, let’s go check it out,” she said, releasing him and leaping into the water. The current whooshed her away, and he had to let go of his rock to follow her quickly, before the light of her scales disappeared.

“Tsunami!” he called. There was no way she could hear him over the roaring waterfall. An underwater boulder slammed into his belly, and he inhaled a mouthful of river. Choking and coughing, he paddled after the blurry glow in the distance.

Suddenly the glow vanished, and he was plunged into darkness again. “TSUNAMI!” he roared.

A heartbeat later, Clay felt the air suddenly yawn wide in front of him. Some instinct kicked in, and he lashed out with his talons and tail. One of his claws caught a jagged spur of rock, and he flung his front talons around it just as the rest of him flew out into space.

He was dangling over the waterfall.

He dug his claws into the rock and hung on for dear life, scrunching his eyes shut even though the darkness was dark enough. His poison-riddled skin screamed with agony as it stretched below his scales. He couldn’t bear to think of how far Tsunami might have fallen. He could picture her broken body, somewhere far below him. . . .

Something whacked his foot.

“Watch out, Clay!” Tsunami’s voice teased. “It’s really dangerous! You might stub a claw!”

Clay opened his eyes.

The waterfall crashed along beside him, cascading into a foamy pile of bubbles only a short distance below his dangling back claws. Tsunami was splashing and somersaulting in the pool, flipping waves at him with her tail.

“Hang on tight!” she cried. “Whatever you do, don’t let go!”

“Ha ha ha,” he said. He stirred the water below him with his tail, checking for rocks, then let himself drop. The waterfall gently battered his head as he resurfaced. “You knew how short it was,” he said accusingly.

“Maybe,” she said with a grin. “All right, yes. I’d just gotten to the edge when I heard you yell and went back for you.”

“Lucky I’m not the type to suffer and die in silence,” Clay said. But he couldn’t help thinking … What would have happened if I hadn’t cried out? What if we had missed each other?

“Come on, the river keeps going this way,” Tsunami said. Her webbed feet swooped through the water, shooting her out in front of him. He followed her through the pool into another narrow channel, with rocky banks on either side.

“But —” He cocked his head. His ears twitched. “I think — that can’t be all the roaring, then? Is there more up ahead?” There were weird echoes in these caves. He couldn’t tell if he was hearing the roar of the small waterfall magnified, or if there was something else.

Tsunami suddenly spread her wings and spun to a halt, gazing up at the ceiling. “Did you see that?”

Clay squinted into the darkness. Her luminescent scales didn’t cast light very far; he couldn’t even see the stalactites that were probably up there. “No.”

“It was a bat!” Tsunami excitedly slammed the river with her tail, submerging Clay in a tidal wave of water.

He came up gasping for air. “A bat? Why are we drowning me over a bat?” Once a bat had blundered in through the sky hole. It had flapped pathetically around the study cave until Sunny begged Dune to catch it and set it free. Clay was half convinced that Dune had eaten it instead, but at least he’d done it where Sunny couldn’t see him.

“Because it must have come from somewhere,” she said. “Bats go outside to hunt. So if bats can get in and out, I bet we can, too. We must be close.”

“Bats are a lot smaller than we are,” Clay pointed out, but Tsunami had already started swimming. He flexed his wings under the water, worried. The pain wasn’t going away. It felt like tiny, sharp teeth biting him all over, under his scales.

“Look,” Tsunami yelled from up ahead. “I see light!”

Clay beat his wings quickly, trying to catch up. It helped that the current was getting faster again.

But then — was the roaring getting louder, too?

He came around a bend in the river and saw a circle of silvery light in the distance. The dark outline of Tsunami’s head was barreling toward it.

Clay couldn’t believe his eyes. It was moonlight, just like he’d seen through the sky hole. There really was a way out, and they’d found it.

He was speeding along now, barely using his legs to paddle as the river whisked him toward the light.

Suddenly, a piercing shriek echoed through the cave, and Tsunami disappeared.

Please be another joke, please be another joke, Clay prayed, swimming as fast as he could. The moonlit entrance yawned wide in front of him, and then, abruptly, he shot out into open space.

The river plunged out of the cave and straight down a tall, sheer cliff.

Clay’s wings flew open and he banked, catching the air before he fell.

He was flying!

Clay had flown before — short hops around the caves, dodging the stalactites and flapping in circles — but that was nothing, nothing compared to this.

Everything was so big.

The sky was everywhere, it just … went on and on and on, like nothing could ever fill it up. It was night, but the light of the three moons was dazzling after a lifetime of caves and sputtering torches. Craggy mountain peaks bit into the sky all around him. In the distance he thought he saw a glimmer of sea.

And the stars!

Clay had thought he knew stars from gazing out of the sky hole. He’d never known how many there were, or how they looked like a silver net cast across the dark.

He felt like he could keep flying up and up forever, all the way to the moons. He wondered if any dragon had ever tried to do that.

This is what we’ve been missing. All this time . . .

Even the sharp lines of pain between his scales couldn’t take away his excitement.

“Can you believe this?” he called, spinning in the air. “Tsunami! Isn’t it amazing?”

There was no answer.

Clay lashed his tail to stop spinning and hovered, his eyes darting around the sky. He couldn’t see Tsunami anywhere. She wouldn’t have flown off without him … would she?

Maybe she’d seen the faraway sea. Maybe she saw her home and couldn’t resist. Clay knew she wouldn’t abandon her friends, but he also knew how desperately she wanted to return to the ocean.

He glanced down toward the horizon and spotted her, far below him, flapping in a frantic downward spiral.

Something was wrong.

It looked like only one of her wings was working.

Clay twisted into a dive and barreled toward her. He tucked his wings close to his body, fighting back the terror as he plummeted. Wind whistled past his face — wind! He’d imagined it all wrong. It was like a live thing: grabbing his tail to throw him off balance, whisking in his eyes to blind him, flaring under his wings to slow him down. It seemed to dig icicle-sharp claws into his skin, slicing under his scales.

The waterfall and the cliff shot past at lightning speed. Was he falling too fast? The ground hurtled toward him, shadows and moonlight mixed in shapes he’d never seen and couldn’t understand. He had no idea how far away it was, or how soon he would reach it. He’d never dealt with distances like this before.

Would he be able to stop? Would it hurt when he did?

But he could see Tsunami below him, still struggling, so he knew that she hadn’t hit the bottom yet, and that made him braver.

He fell, and fell, and fell, and she got closer and closer until . . .

Clay passed her and instantly flared his wings open. His body slammed upright like he’d run into a wall, and then a moment later he was whammed again, this time by a heavy SeaWing landing on him from above.

He tumbled, nearly losing Tsunami over his head, but they caught on to each other with their talons and held tight. With her claws wrapped fiercely around his neck, Clay battled to stay aloft, beating his wings in wide arcs. He wasn’t strong enough to lift her, but at least he could slow her fall.

Tsunami let out a yelp, and then Clay felt something like claws snag his wings and tail. They lost their hold on each other as they fell through the trees, smashing branches and ripping off leaves before they thudded to earth.

It took Clay a moment before he could breathe again. Tsunami’s tail was flopped across his snout. He pushed it aside and sat up, creaking with pain. Tsunami rolled over onto her back, letting her wings flop out to either side. Close up, Clay could see that he was right. One of her azure-blue wings was crooked, as if it had been wrenched out of her shoulder.

He touched it with one claw, and they both winced.

“What happened?” Clay asked.

“Getting out of the chains,” Tsunami said. “I think I dislocated it.”

“And you came after me anyway?” Clay said, appalled. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

She shrugged and winced again. “It didn’t hurt so much in the river, but once I tried to fly . . .”

“DIRT!” Clay yelled suddenly. “I’m standing on dirt!” He stabbed his claws into the ground, and they sank right into the earth. A thrill ran through him from snout to tail.

Tsunami sat up to look at him. “Yay?” she said.

“It’s amazing!” he cried. “Feel how soft it is!” He seized a handful of dirt and flung it at her.

“Hey, quit that!” she protested, defending herself with her good wing.

Clay flattened himself to the grass, feeling the warm earth crumble around his legs and clump against his scales. Scents of green and brown and buried sunshine overwhelmed him. It was nothing like the hard, cold, bare rock under the mountain. The ground here was welcoming and full of life. A worm burrowed past his nose, and he snapped it up.

“Well, now we’re even,” Tsunami said. “I saved you, you saved —”

“I hear the river!” Clay cried, jumping up and shaking himself. Tsunami ducked the shower of dirt that flew off him. “River plus dirt means mud!” He spun around and raced through the trees toward the sound of bubbling water.

Tsunami found him rolling blissfully in the muddy banks of the river. “I don’t think most dragons get this excited about being so dirty,” she said wryly.

“I bet my kind do,” Clay said, ignoring her sarcasm. “I’ve never been this warm in my whole life.” For the first time ever, his claws didn’t ache, his scales didn’t itch, his wings didn’t feel too dry, and he wasn’t worried about stubbing his talons every other step. He felt the mud squelch into the gaps between his scales and realized that the pain from the cave poison was fading, as if the mud was healing him. He sighed happily, squishing himself farther down into the damp riverbank.

“Wow,” Tsunami said. She stuck her front talons in the river. “And we’re not even at the MudWing swamps yet. I wonder if I’ll be this excited when I get to the sea.”

“You will,” Clay said, suddenly feeling certain and brave and confident. “And when you can fly. Can we fix your wing?” He tilted his head, studying her injury.

The waterfall poured down a cliff that towered over them, with even higher mountains beyond. The three moons were low in the sky. Clay guessed it would be morning soon, and then they could look for the smoke signal that would lead to their friends. But Tsunami couldn’t fly, she’d be stuck down here … easy pickings for any hostile dragons flying by.

Clay glanced up at the sky, remembering that they’d popped out into a world at war. It seemed so peaceful here. From the way the big dragons talked, he’d imagined the entire world as a giant battlefield. It was strange to be in a quiet clearing, with no sights or sounds of war or even other dragons anywhere nearby.

But he knew that the Talons of Peace — and, by extension, the dragonets — had enemies everywhere. The three SandWing queens distrusted the prophecy and would kill anyone who got in their way. And there was a whole list of dragons who might do terrible things to the dragonets of destiny, if they ever found them.

Tsunami twisted to look at her dislocated wing. “I’m sure I can fix it,” she said. “I saw this in a scroll once. It just needs to be banged back into place. Maybe if I run myself into a tree.” She glanced around at the forest, then suddenly charged at the nearest solid tree trunk.

Clay leaped out of the mud and pounced on her tail, yanking her back before she crashed.

“Ow!” Tsunami stormed. “Get off! I can fix it! This will work!” She snapped her teeth at him.

“Stop being a grumpy SkyWing. Smashing yourself into a tree is a terrible plan,” Clay said. “Can I look at it?”

Tsunami settled down on the grass, grumbling, with her wings spread out. Clay circled her, then stood back and looked at the uneven line of her wings and shoulders.

“If you can stay still,” he said, “I think I can shove it back into place.”

“Is that a good idea?” Tsunami asked, flinching away from him.

“Better than running into a tree,” he pointed out. “Dig your claws in and brace yourself.”

Tsunami clutched the ground and closed her eyes. Clay felt gently along her shoulder with his front talons. It was easy to find the spot where a bone had slipped out of its socket. He touched it lightly until he was sure where it was and where it needed to be. Then he grabbed and shoved the bone into place in one quick, strong movement.

“OW!” Tsunami roared, rearing back. Her powerful tail whipped around and slammed Clay into a thicket of prickly bushes.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” Clay yelped, floundering free. “I really thought that would work.” He stopped. Tsunami was turning in a circle, flexing and extending both wings. They looked perfectly matched again.

“It did work,” she said. “It’s a little sore, but I can move it now. Pretty fierce, Clay.” She helped disentangle his tail from the branches. “Sorry I whacked you.”

Clay opened his mouth to respond, but Tsunami suddenly seized his snout and held it shut. She raised one talon, her ears twitching.

“What’s that?” she whispered.

Clay tried to swivel his head around, but Tsunami’s grip was too tight. He strained his ears to listen.

Something was crashing through the forest toward them.

“

Not big enough to be a dragon,” Tsunami whispered. “I think.”

Now Clay could hear a huffing, panting sound and the cracking of branches. It sounded more prey than predator. He pried Tsunami’s claws off his snout and whispered, “Maybe we can eat it.” They couldn’t rescue the other dragonets until sunrise anyway, and he wanted to test his hunting skills outside the caves.

A short, pale creature stumbled into the moonlit clearing in front of them. The top of its furry head was barely as high as Clay’s shoulder. It had two long, thin legs and two dangling arms that ended in floppy, clawless talons. One arm held something pointy, like a giant dragon’s claw, and the other was wrapped around a bulky sack.

It spotted Tsunami and Clay, dropped everything it was holding, and shrieked a long high-pitched note, like the birds Clay had sometimes heard through the sky hole.

“It’s a scavenger,” Tsunami cried with delight. “Look, Clay! Our first time outside, and we’re already seeing a real live scavenger.”

“It’s so little,” Clay said. “And look, it’s scavenging something right now.” He reached out to poke the bulky sack. The creature screamed again, backing away and covering its head with its arms.

“I thought they’d be scarier,” Tsunami said, disappointed. She lowered her snout to peer at it. “One of these killed Queen Oasis? Really?” She picked up the metal claw it had been carrying, which was about four times as long as a regular dragon claw. “I guess these are pretty sharp, but still … it must have been some kind of unlucky accident.”

“Can we eat it?” Clay asked. His tongue flicked out and in.

“Starflight says they’re endangered,” Tsunami said. “But I say it’s their fault we’re all in this war, so eat as many as you like.” She swung the claw in a circle and glared down at the scavenger.

The scavenger was gibbering strange noises at them, waving its arms at the sack and the claw. Some of its movements were almost dragonlike, as if it was trying to communicate with them.

“Maybe it wants us to have whatever’s in here,” Clay said, lifting the sack. He upended it, and a pile of jewels and trinkets tumbled out, bouncing and sparkling across the grass. Clay saw three large rubies and a scattering of white diamonds among the gold shapes.

“Treasure,” Tsunami cried. She picked up a silver medallion with a spiral carved into it, studded with tiny sapphires.

“Glory would love that,” Clay said.

“So would I!” Tsunami said. “I know you like bringing her pretty things to cheer her up, but I saw this first.”

“All right,” Clay said diplomatically. “Maybe something else, then. Can we keep all this treasure?”

“Certainly not,” said a new voice. “Not unless you want to fight me for it, which I don’t advise.” An orange SkyWing dragon, slightly bigger than Clay, landed soundlessly in the clearing behind the scavenger. Wreaths of smoke coiled around her horns. As the scavenger shrieked again, she bent down and bit off its head.

“Blech,” she said, spitting it out again immediately. The head bounced across the grass as the body slowly toppled over, blood pouring out of its neck.

“Now, that’s just unfair,” said the orange dragon. “First of all, thieves are always trying to steal my beautiful treasure. And then they aren’t even delicious when I catch them.” She poked the body. “All stringy and tasting like fish. Yuck.”

Clay took a step back from the spreading pool of blood. He didn’t feel hungry anymore.

“Who are you?” Tsunami asked. She was turning the medallion over between her claws as if she wondered whether it might be worth fighting for.

The orange dragon stared at her, her yellow eyes narrowing to slits. Clay noticed that a fine coat of golden chain mail, hung with rubies and amber drops, was fitted around the dragon’s torso. A row of tiny rubies was embedded between the scales over each of her eyes, and more rubies edged the top of her wings. Whoever she was, she had a lot of treasure, which meant she must be important.

“You don’t know who I am?” the strange dragon said. “How upsetting. I’m really very hurt. Either I need to get out more, or you’re not a very good spy, are you, SeaWing?”

“I’m not a spy!” Tsunami said. “We don’t even know where we are. We’ve been — held prisoner, kind of, and we just escaped.”

The orange dragon tilted her head at Clay. “A SeaWing and a MudWing together,” she said. “Let’s see. I know you’re not from my dungeons, unless I’m getting horribly forgetful … so who was holding you? Blaze? I don’t think she has prison camps. Wouldn’t fit with her everybody-love-me act.”

Clay took another step back. He didn’t like the sound of a dragon who had her own dungeons. “Tsunami,” he said quietly, “just give her back her treasure, and let’s go.”

“A MudWing using his head,” said the orange dragon. “You don’t see that very often.” She slid menacingly toward Tsunami, stepping right through the scavenger’s blood and leaving red claw prints on the grass. Small flames flickered in her nostrils, and a steady stream of white smoke poured out and gathered more thickly around her horns.

“All right,” Tsunami said, holding out the medallion. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Oh, neither do I,” said the orange dragon. “That’s why it makes me so sad when trouble keeps coming to me.” She reached out and grabbed Tsunami’s talon with the medallion still in it, squeezing hard. Clay started forward, but the strange dragon shot a bolt of flame at him so he had to duck back. She glared at Tsunami. “Nobody touches my treasure.”

“We didn’t know!” Tsunami protested. “We don’t even know who you are!”

“Oh,” the dragon hissed, “didn’t I say? My name is Scarlet. But I highly recommend you call me Your Majesty if you want to live.”

Clay inhaled sharply. Even he recognized that name.

They were standing face-to-face with the queen of the SkyWings.

She was smaller than he had expected — smaller than Kestrel — but Clay knew they shouldn’t underestimate the SkyWing queen. She’d held on to her power for thirty years, despite fourteen brave, foolish, extremely dead-now challengers. She was one of the longest-lived and deadliest queens in Pyrrhia. Not to mention one of the worst possible dragons to get her claws on the dragonets of destiny, especially since she was allied with Burn, who hated the prophecy and had destroyed the SkyWing egg six years ago.

Clay tried to remember anything else they’d learned about Scarlet. All he could think was scary.

Queen Scarlet let go of Tsunami’s talons and slipped the medallion over her own neck. She turned and ran one claw down Clay’s snout.

“Now you, MudWing, make me curious. We’re on the same side. So why didn’t you recognize me?”

“Like I said —” Tsunami started. Queen Scarlet silenced her with a flick of her tail.

“I like to hear the MudWing speak,” she said. “All rumbly and deep and nervous.”

“We, uh,” Clay stammered. “We’ve been underground awhile … kind of always . . .” Tsunami made a face at him behind the queen’s back, which he guessed meant he shouldn’t give too much away. But what was he supposed to say?

He glanced up at the mountains looming overhead and realized that they were outlined with a golden glow. The sun was coming up. They needed to go rescue their friends, and fast, before Kestrel took out her anger on the dragonets she could find.

“We’re just passing through,” he said to Queen Scarlet. The rows of rubies over the queen’s eyes arched disbelievingly. “I mean — it was an honor to meet — a — it was very —” Terrifying was the only word he could think of. “We have to go,” he blurted.

“Already?” said the queen. “But that’s heartbreaking. I hate being abandoned mid-conversation. There’s so much more I want to know about you.” She brushed the tip of her claw along the bottom of Clay’s chin. “I think the only place you should go is back to my palace in the sky. Doesn’t that sound thrilling? Don’t say no, it’ll hurt my feelings. You’re just what I’ve been looking for.”

Clay had no idea what that meant, but he was too petrified to respond anyway. He stared up into her unfriendly amber eyes, thinking for the first time in his life that maybe Kestrel was right about everything. Most especially about staying under the mountain and avoiding all the bad dragons out in the world.

Behind Scarlet, Tsunami raised the scavenger’s sharp claw. Her eyes met Clay’s. He felt the same chilling fear she must be feeling. If they attacked the SkyWing queen, they’d instantly have a new, powerful enemy who hated them.

But they couldn’t tell her the truth about themselves. She’d take them captive or sell them to her ally Burn or kill them just to mess with the prophecy. And they couldn’t go with her either — they had to get back to their friends.

He nodded slightly. Do it. We have no choice.

Tsunami stabbed the claw through Queen Scarlet’s tail at the vulnerable spot, driving it straight into the ground beneath.

The queen roared with fury and pain. She whipped her head around and blasted fire in all directions.

“Fly!” Tsunami yelled. She rolled under the flames and shoved Clay’s tail. He spread his wings and bolted into the sky with Queen Scarlet’s fire scorching his claws. Tsunami flapped beside him, her wingbeats wobbly but determined.

“It won’t take her long to get free,” Tsunami called. “Quick, we have to lose her in the peaks.” She soared up the cliff, and Clay followed.

They flew past the top of the waterfall, where the river flowed out of a hole in the cliff. They flew up and up until they reached the top and whooshed out onto a rocky plateau studded with dark green trees and bushes. Even up here, the mountains loomed over them, impossibly high and unbearably big. The peaks zigzagged to the north and south like crooked dragon teeth, a jagged row that went on and on and on.

The bigness of everything kept overwhelming Clay. How would they ever find their friends again in all of this? And even if they did, what could five dragonets do to save a world this big?

Tsunami led the way, staying low and swooping around trees, diving into chasms where they found them. Her wingbeats were getting stronger as she flew. Sunlight spread across the mountains, dazzling Clay’s eyes. He wasn’t used to so much brightness — and this was only dawn. The ferocity of the midday sun was still ahead.

“Here!” Tsunami called, jerking her head toward a dent in the side of the mountain. They spiraled down to land on the ledge outside a small cave. From here they could look over the rocky plateau, with valleys and mountain peaks spread out around them. Clay peered down nervously. The roar of the waterfall was a faint rumble in the distance. There was no sign of Queen Scarlet.

“I can’t believe you did that,” he said to Tsunami.

“I had to, didn’t I?” she asked, but without her usual conviction. She scratched at her gills, looking worried, then slipped into the shadows of the cave to check that it was empty.

Clay wanted to reassure her, but he was worried, too. He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the rising sun. The heat soaked down through his scales until even his bones felt warm at last.

“You should see yourself,” Tsunami said from the cave. “You’re practically glowing. I didn’t know MudWings had so many colors in them.”

Clay opened his eyes and glanced down. He’d always thought of himself as just brown — plain brown scales, ordinary brown claws, the color of flat mud from horns to tail. But now, in the full sunlight for the first time, he could see gold and amber glints between and beneath his scales. Even the browns seemed richer and deeper, like the mahogany trunk where Webs kept the most delicate scrolls.

“Huh,” he said.

“You’re so pretty,” Tsunami joked, emerging into the light. Clay had to bite back a gasp. While the sun brought out his colors, it made her look bejeweled, like a dragon made of sapphires and emeralds or summer leaves and oceans.

He thought of Glory and how beautiful she already was in the gloomy caves. None of them would be able to look at her in full sunlight, or else they’d be too dazzled to ever speak to her again.

Glory. Clay squinted out at the mountainside. There were crags and holes and rocky outcroppings that might lead to tunnels everywhere. He had no idea what the outside of their home looked like. They could see a lot of the mountain from here, but no smoke signal yet.

The sun had nearly cleared the horizon now, climbing slowly up the sky and chasing away the three moons. Clay saw several red shapes flitting around the distant mountain peaks. At first he thought they were birds, until he spotted fire flickering around them like lightning, and realized they were dragons.

This was definitely SkyWing territory. Starflight was right about where their secret cave was. But Clay had no idea how they’d escape the mountains now that the SkyWing queen was probably hunting them in a towering rage.

Tsunami seized his shoulder. “Over there!” she cried, pointing.

A thin column of smoke was starting to rise from a hole partway down the slope. Clay flung himself into the air and swooped over the hole. It was enclosed and partly hidden by a thicket of branches, so he couldn’t land next to it. But it was open to the sky and looked like the shape of the sky hole to him.

It had to be his friends.

Tsunami swept up beside him. They both hovered around the smoke, trying to peer down into the hole.

“Starflight and Sunny must be right there,” Clay said. “Right below us!” The smoke smelled of old paper. He felt a twinge of pity for Starflight, burning some of his beloved scrolls.

“So we’re close, but we have to find the entrance,” Tsunami said. “The tunnel must come out somewhere nearby.” She spiraled down to the rocky ground outside the bushes. She started pacing as if she were trying to count off the distance from the study room to the entrance tunnel.

Clay stayed up in the air, circling. He had the same funny feeling he’d had looking at Tsunami’s crooked wing — that if he relaxed and just looked, he could see how things should fit together. He’d walked the caves under the mountain a million times. He knew them better than his own claws.

He could still hear the faint roar of the waterfall, so he could guess which way the underground river flowed. He pictured the tunnel from the study cave to the central hall and mapped it out on the craggy rocks below.

“Here,” he called to Tsunami, swooping down to land. “The boulder blocking the exit should be right below here. So the tunnel to the outside would go that way —” He turned to look.

“The ravine,” Tsunami said. A crevasse cut through the rocks a short distance away. When they peered down into it, they could see a stream running over pebbly gravel and sandy mud. “The entrance must be down there somewhere.”

Clay hopped down to the bottom of the ravine, keeping his wings spread to slow his fall. Mud squelched between his talons as he landed. He felt a wave of anger wash over him. Here was mud and sunlight and warm fresh air, this close to their cave. Why hadn’t the guardians ever brought the dragonets outside? Even small trips to this ravine would have made life so different.

He knew they’d say it was for safety. They’d say it was to protect the dragonets, in case the distant SkyWings spotted them.

But Clay guessed it was really because the guardians didn’t trust him and his friends. They didn’t trust them not to fly away. They didn’t trust them to act smart and avoid drawing attention to themselves.

He dug sharp gashes in the mud with his claws. The dragonets never even had a chance to be trustworthy. Maybe Clay didn’t deserve it, after attacking the others at hatching. Maybe the guardians thought that something inside him might snap at any moment. But there was no reason to have kept Sunny and Glory and Starflight and Tsunami in the dark all these years.

Tsunami thumped down beside him and nodded at a mossy pile of boulders up ahead.

“Let’s check there first.” They squished and splashed down the stream.

Clay spotted something in the mud in front of them. He flared his wings up to stop Tsunami from going any farther.

“Look!” he said. “Dragon tracks!”

Fresh dragon prints were stamped into the riverbank, with the deep line of a tail dragged between them. They disappeared suddenly as if the dragon had lifted off into the sky.

Clay gingerly fit one of his own feet into a print. It was dwarfed by the size of the other dragon’s talons.

“If it came from our cave,” Tsunami said, “and I’m sure it did — then it must be Kestrel.”

“How do you know?” Clay asked.

Tsunami put her own foot down next to one of the prints. “No webs between the claws,” she said, “so it’s not a SeaWing. They’re too recent to be Morrowseer’s from yesterday. And you can see all four feet here, so it’s not Dune.”

“Oh,” Clay said, feeling foolish. “Of course.”

“There are prints leaving, but not coming back,” Tsunami said, her voice rising with excitement. “Maybe she went out looking for us this morning. If she’s still away, this is our best chance to get the others out.” She started running down the riverbank, following the line of prints to where it began. “Come on, Clay, hurry!”

Clay raced after her. The tracks led right to the tumble of boulders. When they climbed up onto the large rocks, they could see down into a dark tunnel in the side of the ravine. It was almost entirely hidden from view unless you looked from the right angle.

“This is it,” Tsunami whispered.

“Why didn’t she hide her tracks better?” Clay worried. “What if it’s a trap?”

“It’s not,” Tsunami said confidently. “Kestrel doesn’t know we’re coming back for the others. She doesn’t think like that. If she were one of us, she’d escape and leave everyone else behind without a second thought.”

That sounded true to Clay. Kestrel never believed that dragons could keep their word or care about other dragons.

“She was in a hurry to find us, that’s all,” Tsunami pointed out. Clay glanced up at the sky anxiously. If Kestrel hadn’t bothered to be cautious, she must be really angry with them.

Tsunami lowered herself into the tunnel, and Clay slid down beside her. He was warm enough now to make fire, so he breathed a small burst of flame to give them a glimpse of the tunnel ahead. They edged forward as Tsunami’s scales began to glow.

The tunnel took a sharp right, then a left, then went down at a steep angle for a few steps. But soon it straightened out, took them around another corner, and ended — at an enormous gray boulder.

Clay’s heart thumped hard in his chest. They’d really found it.

He was looking at his prison from the outside.

Tsunami reared up on her back legs and began running her talons along the walls. “Look for something that’ll move the boulder,” she said.

Clay breathed another burst of fire at the wall on his side. It looked like ordinary flat stone with a few fissures running from the ceiling to the floor. He scraped his claws through the cracks. Nothing happened except his claws tingled painfully.

He tried sniffing around the boulder, then shoved it, but it wouldn’t move any more than it had on the other side.

“I hope Starflight’s right,” he said, pushing away the sinking feeling in his stomach. “I hope we really can open it from this side.”

“We can,” Tsunami said fiercely. “It’ll be a lever or something . . .” She backed away a few steps, peering up at the top of the boulder.

“Or magic,” Clay said. “What if it’s a magic word? Or some kind of talisman we don’t have?”

Tsunami stared at the boulder for a moment, frowning, then shook her head. “They’d need an animus dragon to enchant it, and who even knows if those ever existed in the first place.”

The only thing Clay remembered about the lesson on magic and animus dragons was that they had power over objects. He remembered that because Starflight spent the rest of the day sticking his nose in the air and insisting that NightWings were far more magically powerful than any mythical animus dragons.

“If they’re so great, why do the NightWings live somewhere mysterious where no one can find them?” Clay had asked.

“Easy,” Starflight had said loftily. “It’s because we have all these special powers, and we don’t want to make regular dragons feel inferior.” Even though they are, his expression implied.

Clay snorted. “Special powers like what?” he’d asked.

“You know,” Starflight had answered, irritated. “Telepathy? Precognition? Invisibility? Hello?”

“You don’t have invisibility,” Clay had argued. “I mean, you’re a black dragon. You’re just hard to see in the shadows. That’s not a power. I’d be invisible, too, if I were lying in a mud puddle.”

“Yeah, well,” Starflight had said, “we can appear out of nowhere in the dark of night! Swooping down as if the sky has just fallen on you!” He’d spread his wings majestically.

“Still not a power,” Clay had said. “That’s just you guys being creepy.”

“It is not creepy!” Starflight had cried, his voice rising. “It is magnificent and imposing!” He’d stopped and taken a deep breath. “Besides, we’re the only ones with visions of the future, so there.”

“Well, I say until the NightWings come down off the clouds, all we have is rumors and a mumbo-jumbo prophecy that could mean anything.” Then Clay had draped his nose off the rim of the ledge and peered across at Starflight. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve got any special mind powers, other than being way too smart.”

“Well, I’ll have powers eventually,” Starflight had huffed. “Maybe it’s something NightWings develop when we’re older. You’re supposed to be studying, not making fun of me!”

“I wasn’t making fun,” Clay had protested. It was true he’d been trying to distract Starflight from studying, though. But of course that never worked for long.

Now Clay scraped at the floor under the boulder. He actually missed Starflight. More than that, he was worried about him. How had Kestrel reacted when she couldn’t find Clay, Tsunami, or Glory? She wouldn’t hurt Starflight or Sunny … would she?

Suddenly his claws caught on something. He flattened himself to the stone floor and peered underneath the boulder. A long, sturdy stick was jammed under the rock, holding it in place.

“Here,” he whispered to Tsunami. He wrapped his talons around the stick and tried to yank it free. After a few tries, he realized it wouldn’t come loose, but it did move from side to side. He tried sliding it sideways, and the boulder began to roll. He stopped quickly and looked at Tsunami.

“What if Webs and Dune are waiting for us?” Clay asked.

“They can’t stop us, not all five of us — not if we all fight. The only way they kept us in was by blocking the way out. Once it’s open … we’ll all be free.” Tsunami let out a long breath.

“All right,” Clay said, gritting his teeth. “Let’s do this.”

He shoved the stick as hard as he could. The boulder slowly rolled aside with a soft scraping sound. The central cave came into view, and a shiver ran along Clay’s tail at how strange it looked from the outside.

A forlorn little shape was huddled by the river, trailing her talons in the water. She turned as the boulder moved, and her gray-green eyes went wide.

“Shhh,” Tsunami hissed quietly, bounding across the cave toward her. Sunny leaped up at the same moment and threw her wings open. She pressed her front talons to her snout, beaming.

“You did it!” she whispered.

Clay glanced at the tunnel that led to the guardians’ cave. Even if Tsunami was right that Webs and Dune couldn’t stop them, he didn’t want to stick around and find out. “Where are the others?” he asked quietly.

“I’ll get Starflight,” Sunny said, heading for the study cave. “Glory — I don’t know.” She glanced up at the stalactites. Clay felt a stab of worry. Was Glory all right? What if something had happened to her while she was camouflaged — would she have stayed invisible? What if she had fallen off a stalagmite or flown into an outcropping and hurt herself? What if —

“Right here,” a voice whispered in his ear. Soft wings brushed his, and Glory’s long shape shimmered into view. Her scales shifted from gray and black to a warm golden orange flecked with dark blue.

“You’re all right,” Clay said. In his relief, he twined his tail around hers without thinking.

She tensed, but she didn’t pull away immediately like she normally would. Instead she nudged him with her elegant snout. “Of course I am,” she said. “I would have been fine on my own, you know.”

Perhaps she felt his wings droop, because she added, “But thank you for doing insanely dangerous things for me anyway.”

“Anytime,” Clay said happily.

Glory stepped back and nodded at where Starflight was staggering out of the tunnel from the study cave.

“Kestrel was pretty furious,” she said. “I just had to listen to her from my hiding place. Those two got the brunt of it.”

Clay started forward, but Tsunami and Sunny were already on either side of Starflight. For a horrible moment he thought Starflight was limping — that he’d been beaten or burned or terribly injured by Kestrel.

Then he realized that Starflight was moving oddly because he was carrying a giant sack of scrolls on his back.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Tsunami said, pulling it away from him. “We don’t need these. And you’ve already read them all a thousand times.”

“We might need them,” Starflight protested, yanking it back. “They’ll tell us what’s safe to eat and all the different tribal customs and how to fly in bad weather and —”

“You can tell us all those things,” Clay said. “You’re going to anyway.”

“But what if I forget something important?” Starflight fretted.

“Ha. You’d be a lot more likable if you ever did forget anything,” Glory said.

“The only thing that’s important is getting out of here right now,” Tsunami said. “Before Webs and Dune wake up.”

“And before Kestrel comes back,” Glory added.

“What thrilling news. Kestrel is part of this? I’ve been looking for her for an awfully long time.”

The five dragonets whirled around.

Queen Scarlet was standing in the entranceway. Behind her, the tunnel was blocked by a row of SkyWings in different shades of flame — all of them large, all of them breathing small spurts of fire, and all of them angry.

But none of them looked as angry as the queen of the SkyWings.

“I haven’t seen Kestrel in, what, seven years?” Queen Scarlet said in a pleasant voice that didn’t match the rage in her eyes. “What a fun reunion this is going to be.” She whipped her tail back and forth behind her. “All my least favorite dragons in one place.”

Clay was the closest dragonet to her. He took a step back toward his friends and spread his wings. She’d have to go through him to get to them. He hoped she couldn’t see how his claws were shaking.

“You followed us here,” Tsunami said in a choked voice.

“Oh, I didn’t have to,” said the queen. “Someone sent up a lovely, helpful smoke signal for me. Led us all right here. What a brilliant idea.”

My idea, Clay thought, horrified. This is my fault. I brought the SkyWings down on us.

“Who — who are you?” Sunny squeaked.

“Now really, this is getting insulting,” said the queen. “You’re in my territory. Apparently you’re living under my mountain. I am only the most important dragon for hundreds of miles. How dare you not recognize me?” She arched her neck and spread her bejeweled wings.

“Queen Scarlet of the SkyWings,” Starflight breathed. He crouched low, touching his head to the floor and crossing his front talons together.

“Now that’s more like it,” she said, striding into the cave. “Three moons, it’s gloomy in here.” She glanced around, spotted Starflight’s sack of scrolls, and set it ablaze with one burst of fire.

Starflight stared at the burning scrolls, frozen in place. Clay edged sideways, trying to shield him and Sunny and Glory all at once. If only he were bigger!

“My goodness,” Queen Scarlet said, squinting. “You’re a NightWing!” She batted Clay aside as if he were made of leaves and grabbed Starflight’s chin. Clay scrambled up again and took a step toward her, but the clanking of armor and grim expressions of the SkyWings spilling into the cave made him stop.

“A NightWing not yet ten years old,” Queen Scarlet said, turning Starflight around and prodding his scales like he was a cow she planned to eat for dinner. “How thrilling! They don’t normally let their dragonets out into the world. We might corrupt their superior perfection or something, you know.” She breathed smoke into his face, and he coughed. “I’ve never had a NightWing in my arena before. Thrilling, thrilling! Tell me, what am I thinking right now?”

Starflight’s expression was pure terror.

“Too hard?” Queen Scarlet teased. “I’ll give you a hint. I’m thinking — now why would a NightWing, a SeaWing, and a MudWing be hiding out under my mountain? Along with whatever those two are that the MudWing is cutely trying to protect?” She flicked her tail at Glory and Sunny. Clay shivered as the queen leaned closer to Starflight. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain prophecy, would it?”

“What is going on out here?” Dune grumbled, limping into the cave. He stopped short at the sight of the SkyWings. His black eyes turned slowly toward the queen, and Clay saw fear on his face for the first time ever.

“Webs!” he yelled, and then the maimed SandWing hurtled across the cave toward the queen.

“Stop!” Sunny shrieked. “They’ll hurt you!”

Dune didn’t seem to hear her. He seized Queen Scarlet and flung her away from Starflight. “Don’t touch them,” he roared. “You’ll never get your claws on them.”

The queen twisted in midair and landed on her feet facing him, hissing. “They’re mine now,” she snarled. She launched herself at Dune.

Webs came pounding into the cave just as the SkyWing soldiers erupted toward their queen. He barely paused before throwing himself in their way. His tail smacked three of them back, and his claws raked the underbelly of another. Clay had never seen him fight before. He hadn’t known Webs could be dangerous.

“Stay back,” Clay said to Sunny. “And you should hide yourself,” he added to Glory.

“Disappear while you try to die for us again?” she said. “No, thanks.” She pushed past him and went after Tsunami, who was already fighting alongside Webs. Clay shoved Sunny up onto a boulder and ran to join them.

“Wait, I can help!” Sunny called. “Can’t I?”

“These dragonets are sacred,” Dune shouted as Queen Scarlet smashed him into a stalagmite. She was smaller than him, but deceptively strong, and his old injuries slowed him down. He staggered up, gasping, with his scarred wing trailing crookedly beside him. “They’re the dragonets of destiny. You can’t have them!”

“But what if it’s my destiny to play with them?” she said, lashing her claws at his stump. He howled, and a stream of blood poured from the new wound. “Oh, wait, that’s right,” she said. “I don’t care about destiny. I don’t care about prophecies or any of that NightWing silliness.”

She scored her talons along his wing, ripping open the scars. “Besides, they made me awfully mad and then ran away. That happens to me far too often, but you know what? I always find the ones who betray me in the end. Even if I have to wait seven years.” The queen seized Dune by the neck and pinned him up against the wall. “Right, Kestrel?”

Clay stumbled. The SkyWing he was fighting knocked him over and trapped his tail and wings beneath four massive feet. The battle seemed to freeze for a moment, and from his crushed position, Clay saw Kestrel slide into the cave.

“Poor, poor Scarlet,” she said bitingly. “Everyone betrays you. Well, you’ve got me now. Let these worthless others go.” She didn’t even look down at the dragonets.

Clay twisted his head and met Tsunami’s eyes. He would never, never have guessed that Kestrel would give herself up to save them. Maybe she really meant it about keeping them alive. Maybe that was the only thing she cared about, no matter how much she hated them.

“Kestrel,” the queen tsked. “That sounded like an order. Have you switched from disobeying orders to giving them now?”

“I won’t fight,” Kestrel said, her voice cold and hard. “I’ll come with you. Just leave them. These dragonets have nothing to do with the SkyWings.”

“You will come with me,” said Queen Scarlet. “Funny that you thought you had a choice about that. We’ve got a thrilling trial planned, followed by an even more thrilling execution. But as for these little dragons . . .” She swept her tail toward Clay and his friends. “You can’t really expect me to give up prizes like this.”

“They’re no prizes,” Kestrel snorted. “They’re useless, every one of them.”

“Plus I’m weird-looking,” Sunny chimed in from the top of her rock.

The queen’s tongue flicked out of her mouth, and more smoke coiled around her horns. “Oh, they’re just the new blood my arena needs. It would be terribly sad to let them go. I would be too, too devastated.”

Clay tried to heave the SkyWing off him, but the soldier who had him pinned was too big. He barely glanced down at Clay’s pathetic struggles. This would be a good time to call up that inner monster, Clay thought, but no surge of strength or violence or rage answered him.

“Take them all,” Queen Scarlet announced. “Except this one, of course.” She shook Dune lightly, as if she were shaking the fluff off a dead pigeon. He clawed at her talons, his eyes bulging. “I mean, what use is a crippled dragon who can’t fly? I’m surprised you haven’t killed yourself already, SandWing. But I can take care of that for you.”

“No!” Sunny screamed, leaping at them.

But it was too late. With a chilling crack, Queen Scarlet snapped Dune’s neck and dropped his body on the stone floor.

“Dune!” Sunny howled. She squirmed past Scarlet and crouched beside him, shaking him with her front talons. His mangled wing flopped, and his scales scraped against the rocks. His black eyes were empty. “Dune, wake up!”

Clay was too horrified to move, even if he could have escaped the SkyWing soldier. Dune is dead, and it’s all my fault. I came up with the smoke-signal plan. I brought the SkyWings here to kill him.

Who else is going to die because of me?

Kestrel suddenly lunged at the SkyWing soldiers. She grabbed the one who was clutching Webs and ripped him free. “Tell the Talons,” she snarled, shoving Webs toward the river.

Before anyone could stop him, Webs pelted down the slope and dove into the water. A huge wave doused the rocks and splashed all the dragons. He vanished below the surface while Clay was still blinking.

Clay remembered the tight gap and the long tunnel he’d swum through. Would Webs fit? Would he make it outside?

“Oooo,” Queen Scarlet said, wiping her crest dry with one claw. “The Talons of Peace. I hope they try storming my sky palace to save you. That would be thrilling fun. Especially the part where we slaughter them all.”

The SkyWing soldiers brought chains forward and started wrapping each of the dragonets in heavy iron. Clay caught Glory’s eye. “Hide,” he mouthed. She shook her head.

“No way. I’m going with you,” she whispered.

The weight of the chains made Clay’s wings and head droop as they were all marched through the tunnel and out into the dawn. The sun was slithering up the sky, casting golden light across the mountains.

Clay glanced up and thought he saw a dark figure circle overhead, spot them, and fly away. He guessed it might be Morrowseer, but he wasn’t surprised that the NightWing made no effort to rescue them. NightWings never got their claws dirty. They delivered prophecies and told other dragons what to do, but they stayed out of the war and avoided fighting.

Clay’s heart ached. They’d come so close to freedom, but now they were far worse off than before. Life under the mountain had felt like prison … but he knew it was nothing compared to being trapped in the claws of the SkyWing queen.